Eulogy for William E. Smith

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Genealogy record of William Egbert Smith
Obituary

Written by his son, Brian J. Smith, and delivered at the memorial service on September 12, 2012.

Good morning.

I'd like to begin by thanking Kathryn, for the many years of time and effort you have spent taking care of our parents. You helped Dad so much, with his daily living, with chores around the house, with his medical needs. You did this with grace and patience that none of the rest of us could have matched. Thanks.

The day last month after we took my father to the hospital - and we realized he was unlikely to ever return home, although he didn't know that - I was looking over the things left behind on his desk at home and I found a stack of Sudoku puzzles clipped from the newspaper. The puzzle on the top of the stack was dated just three days earlier, and he had completely solved it - perfectly! And in ink, and without little guess numbers that I use. But then I noticed that the solution to the puzzle was right there on the same newspaper page, printed upside down. Now there's a story been going around our family that Dad was so confused that he was seen trying to work a Sudoku puzzle upside down. So I'm here to set that story straight. Dad was not confused. He was cheating!

I don't want to say anything more here about my father's final days. I really want to talk about who he was, what he accomplished, and what he meant to his family.

Two years ago my father wrote his own obituary, which you probably read in yesterday's Daily Breeze. So here is what my dad would like to tell you about himself:

William E. Smith, beloved husband, father and grandfather, passed away on _____, at the age of __. He was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. After serving with the army for two years with the Signal Corps, he graduated summa cum laude [with greatest praise] from the University of Buffalo with a degree in Engineering and from Cornell University with a Master's degree in Aeronautical Engineering. After working ten years at Cornell, William and his family moved to Southern California, where he was employed by Douglas Aircraft for fourteen years and the Aerospace Corporation for fifteen years. During his career, William provided support for the space programs of the United States and NATO, and contributed to a wide variety of wind tunnel aviation programs and NASA manned space programs. He retired in 1991. William is survived by his wife Alice, their seven children, -- [and he names the children here] and 16 grandchildren - [and he names them here]. The Smiths have lived in San Pedro since 1965. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in William's name to the World Wildlife Fund.

That's what he wrote. Pretty good, but he left a few things out! For example, I always told people that my parents owned a large five bedroom house with an absolutely spectacular ocean view, of which he was very proud. I also think it's worth mentioning that he witnessed dozens of space shuttle liftoffs and landings. Also, that he was the chief of the McDonnell-Douglas El Segundo office, a fairly large operation.

Dad could also have told you that he enjoyed playing bridge, that he was an avid stamp-collector, and that he loved jazz: Big Band, Swing, Glenn Miller, Stan Kenton, the forties.

Then there were the three most important things about Dad's life:

  1. That he had the great good fortune to meet and marry my mother Alice Staebell.
  2. He succeeded to achieve his biggest dream: To raise a large and happy family, to provide his children with the opportunities that he never had, and to set them up with the fine education that would be the key to their success, as it had been for him.
  3. He overcame tremendous obstacles to achieve his dreams.

Here's how:

Bill Smith was born to a 19-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man, in Buffalo in 1925. The man abandoned the girl and fled across the country to avoid his obligation to support his young wife and child. Then the Great Depression hit. Billy's parents divorced, his mother never remarried, and so young Billy was raised by his mother alone.

His earliest memory, he once told me, was when he was two or three years old. It was in the kitchen of his mother's apartment. He remembers a man sitting in a chair and little Billy was trying desperately to get the man's attention, by tugging on the man's pants and such. But the man showed no interest and pushed him away.

Of course, you probably all realize why this early memory is significant, and so do I, and so did he. The man in the chair might have been Billy's dad, or maybe not. But either way, Billy desperately wanted a father in his life, and he was never able to get one. Not ever. As an adult, Bill would fill this void in his heart by building a big family in the model that he imagined.

So Billy grew up very poor, in what we'd call the slums of Buffalo. But he did have one advantage: He was smart. In school he was generally the top of his class. Billy's mother, although poor, was smart too, and she encouraged his intellectual talents. Maybe most important she impressed on him that a good education was the way to lift himself out of poverty.

But Billy faced big obstacles to getting a good education. When the time came to enter high school, he hoped to go to the best one in town: an expensive private school. Scholastically, he qualified easily, but there was no way his mother could afford to send him there. Each year the school did, however, offer a full-tuition scholarship to one student, which Billy applied for and expected to win. But he lost. To some rich kid. I don't know if the kid was actually rich, because all the other families in town looked rich to Billy and his mom. But Billy had to settle for the public high school instead, which was not as good, but he continued to be the top of his class.

Four years later came the problem of how to afford college. And of course he couldn't. But then, for once, a possible opportunity opened up. In 1944, at the height of World War Two, the U.S. Government passed the G.I. Bill, promising to pay for college for men who served in the military. So Bill set out to join the army. But they rejected him! In his recruiting physical, they diagnosed him with tuberculosis. So instead of joining the army, Bill was sent to a sanatorium to recover.

He did recover, and they released him from the sanatorium, and he went to enlist again. This time they let him in, in October 1945, two months after the end of the war. But the G.I. Bill benefits were still being offered, and after his discharge my dad finally got into college.

My brothers Andrew and Chris were going through some old boxes on Monday, and they found this letter from Bill to his mother from his army days:

8/1/46 Thurs.

As I predicted I shall be broke early next week.
Basic is rough.
The food is usually unappealing so I eat about 7 ice cream bars a day
- no exaggeration - (ice cream on a stick) at 12¢.
It's practically my only nourishment.
Please send coupla bucks.

Dad was to continue his experiments with the ice-cream-only diet later in life.

He never told me anything about his army experience except to say that it paid for his college. That part he told me, many times.

As always, in college Bill was at the top of his class. I took a look at his master's thesis. It went way over my head. Maybe the only one in our family who could understand it is Rachael.

Bill majored in Aeronautical Engineering, which was a much sought-after skill for decades following World War Two. After he graduated, at age 26, his life finally turned the corner and things came easier: The job. The wife. The large family. The move to California.

Dad and Mom had visited California during their honeymoon in 1954, and they agreed this is the place they wanted to live. Eight years later, they put us kids in the station wagon and drove us from Buffalo to Los Angeles. There were six of us children at the time. Seven, if you count the bun in the oven.

Dad was proud of his career, but he was even prouder of his family. For me, I remember that he guided me through so many things: boy scouts, little league, how to play chess, going to Dodger games. We all remember the cross-country driving trips and how fortunate we are to have seen so many sights.

Some of his fatherly guidance didn't go so well. My father loved collecting stamps, and for several Christmases running I'd discover a starter stamp collecting kit waiting for me under the tree. So I'd take it to my parents and try to explain that surely Santa had made a mistake, and surely these stamps were meant for Chris, and surely Chris's bike was meant for me.

I remember Dad as a caring parent, often funny, always firm. He was strict with discipline, and could put us in line with just a few words.

I remember one time, a new house was being built a few doors down from our home, and the construction crew had enclosed it with scaffolding. It all looked like a nifty playground to us kids, so one Saturday afternoon we went over to play on it. This was when we lived in Palos Verdes, so I was probably going on 9 years old, Chris was 7, Mark 6, Kathryn 4, maybe even Rosemary came along.

Our house in Palos Verdes was much like our house in San Pedro, with a backyard that sloped down to a road below. My brothers and sisters and I are climbing up and down this two-story scaffolding, when I see Dad's car come around the bend. He's driving down into the city. This can't be good. The way I remember it, he didn't even slow down his car, he just shouted out the window, "GET OFF OF THERE!" and kept on driving. It seemed as loud as if he was standing right there next to us. So, of course, we got off of there!

We all ran back home and sat on the front steps, fretting about the major punishment that was surely in store for us when Dad returned home, and how could we avoid it. Our first idea, which might have been mine, was to run away from home. We knew the neighborhood better than our parents, and we could sleep in one of the caves. But this idea fell apart when we couldn't figure out a way to find food.

So our second idea - and I think this must have been Chris's, because he always had the clever ideas - was that we should hide inside the house under our beds. Our parents would surely never find us, and we could sneak out every night and raid the refrigerator.

We were still hashing out this plan when Dad got home. To our surprise, he didn't say a word to us, he just walked into the house. He never said a thing about it. This was wise, I think, because we had learned our lesson. After that day, we were always good kids and none of us ever misbehaved again!

John Adams wrote, when he was a leader in the American Revolution, (and this is a paraphrase), "I must be a revolutionary so my sons can study mathematics, science, and law. My sons will be mathematicians, scientists, and attorneys so their sons can be artists."

Bill Smith was a revolutionary. Through hard work and against great odds he changed his life radically away from the course that it started out on. His struggle took him from the slums of Buffalo to the five-bedroom house with the spectacular ocean view. His children's generation are professionals, well educated in science and law. The next generation is still growing up, so we don't know for sure how they will all turn out, but we are seeing a lot of artists: Jennifer the musician, Matthew the writer, Steven the actor, Bert the magician, Mason and Hanna with their amazing artistic talents.

But as much as these generations may be different, there are many similarities. Traits are passed down from parents to children to grandchildren. I see many of my father's traits in myself, in my brothers and sisters, in my sons, and in my nieces and nephews.

If you are one of Bill Smith's grandchildren, you have certainly inherited qualities from him, probably without realizing it. All of you are very intelligent. You get that from Grandpa Bill, and also from Grandma Alice, and probably from your other grandparents. If you use more logic than emotion when you make decisions, to the point that your friends think you're a little odd, that's a Grandpa Bill trait. Or maybe you inherited his stubborn perseverance to finish what you start, or maybe his great attention to detail. Hopefully none of you have inherited the ice-cream-only diet!

We wouldn't be who we are without who Bill Smith was and what he did. Thank you, Dad.

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