William Leftwich Smith's Obituary
William Leftwich Smith born December 5, 1916 in Gadsden, Alabama, passed away at age 100 on December 11, 2016, in Dallas, Texas. He was preceded in death by Helen Clarice Smith, his wife of 66 years. He is survived by son Charles Smith and wife Marcia of Dallas, son Michael Smith of Kingsland, Tx. and wife Emily Smith of Pascagoula, MS., eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He was definitely a one-woman man: he met Helen Clarice Gibson in high school (she was Class Poet and he was Class President), and after they graduated from Hume Fogg High in Nashville in 1934, he went to work in the summer walking the back roads of the hills of Tennessee selling Biblical accessories to farm familes and sleeping in their barns or on their porches. And kept writing her witty, charming, heart-on-my-sleeve letters that she kept all her life. She worked in a Baptist bookstore and went off to Carson-Newman college; thanks to his Uncle Charles Powell Smith, Jr., he was off to Vanderbilt. After a year or two, he got eager to get hitched and went to work for his benefactor down in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the oil field supply business, and that gave him the wherewithal to marry. Their firstborn came in 1940 and was named after that generous Uncle Charlie. The family followed the oil-patch jobs from Texas to Illlinois (adding another son) to Kentucky to Oklahoma and then to settle in New Mexico. They were married 66 years, and, at age 87, he tried to care for his lifelong partner as she descended into the dark fog of dementia but eventually had to resign himself to letting a nursing home take over. She died in 2003, in Kingsland, Texas, where they had a vacation lake home on the Llano River that they had retired to. He loved classical music, ballet, woodworking, square-dancing, and soaring in a glider (he was a charter member of the Hobbs NM Soaring Club) and was handy at all manner of things – plumbing, roofing, repairing and renovating. He was of the Depression-era generation where you used things up then tried to fix them or did without. He never did understand how Americans had become a people who threw things away and bought new ones rather than repair them – he was baffled when told that there were no small-appliance repair shops in Dallas that would fix his $25 phone or his garage-sale electric drill. He’d buy a shovel with a broken handle at an estate sale for a quarter and try to fix it. Family members had to regularly go through his kitchen to toss out stacks of used white foam carry-out coffee cups. He was the quintessential old-fashioned gentleman who rose when ladies entered the room and never wore a hat indoors. He taught his sons how to shake hands and use hammers. There were also lessons in the Marquis of Queensbury Rules (he boxed Golden Gloves as a teen flyweight), and, above all, in the value of work. At age 77, he single-handedly built a 6’ cedar fence 75’ long and had to be discourage by neighbors at age 85 from going up on his roof to clean out his gutters. He was kind, very tolerant, a good listener, and had a great sense of humor that kept him in good cheer. Up until the last weeks of his 100 years when he simply got too worn-out to be happy to be alive, he was fond of bantering with the staff at The Forum where he spent the last two years of life. He was also candid and easily said exactly what he meant and how he felt. When asked how he liked it when people brought dogs to the retirement facilty to cheer up the residents, he said, in a typically droll fashion, “Well, I always pet them and pretend to love them.” Once he was driving with his son in a long stretch of very barren New Mexico semi-desert wasteland when they passed a billboard that boasted “Land For Sale!! Limitless Possibilities!” and he burst out laughing. He told this story: when he was about 7 or so (about 1923) he lived in the Mims Garden Courts in Huntsville, Alabama. There was an old couple lived on the same floor, a jeweler/watchmaker and his wife. One summer the woman told him that if he would carry a sandwich down to her husband’s shop several blocks away, the fellow would give him a dime. He was thrilled to have a job – it was his first working for pay outside the walls of his own home. And a dime was a lot of money, then, to a child. “Penny Candy” was sold in a little store down the street, and a single dime would buy a bag full of Red Hots, Gummy Bears, taffy and gum. So a couple times a week the woman would ask him to deliver the lunch, which usually consisted of a single sandwich wrapped in wax paper. He’d walk the several blocks, and when he got to the shop, sometimes he’d have to wait until the man was finished with a customer to deliver the sandwich and get paid. He said the man always was wearing a jeweler’s loupe on a head band, and when he’d get the sandwich, he’d unwrap it immediately and lift off the top piece of bread as if to make sure his delivery boy hadn’t stolen the meat out of it. Then he’d give him the dime. After a couple of weeks, he said, he started feeling like the J.P. Morgan of Mims Garden. He started imagining his little hoard growing into a heap he could sleep on. In 1923 a whole one dollar was worth about $14 in our current currency. He was rich enough to buy a straw hat or a meal in a café or a night’s lodging in a boarding house or to make his brother envious. He had big plans. But he was about to learn capitalism’s down side: one day he delivered the sandwich as usual, waited around a while for the jeweler to finish some sort of intricate operation at his workbench. Then the fellow finally unwrapped the sandwich, lifted off the top piece of bread, peered down at it. Then he scowled. “This sandwich isn’t worth ten cents,” he said, and gave my Dad a nickel. A eulogy by his daughter-in-law, Marcia Smith: My father-in-law, William, died early this morning. I often joked that he was immortal, given that he lived to be 100 years old and, until the last months of his life, had never spent the night in a hospital. A lifelong skinny guy, he loved to eat…butter and eggs and bacon and Half and Half on his cereal. Vegetables? Not so much. He was kind and funny and generous and the most optimistic person I’ve ever known. But the thing I most appreciated about him was his love of women. That began with his tiny feisty mother, Big Mama, a Southern belle from whom he inherited his appetite, sharp wit, and longevity: she lived to be 98. The love of his life was Helen Clarice Gibson, the shy petite artist and poet to whom he was married for 67 years. When she developed Alzheimer’s, he tenderly cared for her at home until he couldn’t; then, he drove twice a day to the nursing home to offer her tiny bites of soft fruit and chocolate. As a widower, he “took up with” Dottie Mae, and for several years, already in his late 80’s and early 90’s, he would drive 3 ½ hours from his lake house in the Hill Country to Victoria to visit her. When he moved to Dallas in 2012, he met Norma at his retirement home, and he spent hours contentedly watching her assemble jigsaw puzzles. In recent months, his contact with women narrowed to the adoring widows on his floor at The Forum, the brusque aides and perky therapists who tended him when his health failed, and his Dallas family — granddaughter Holly and me. A special light in his eyes blinked on any time Holly entered the room; I imagine he saw his Helen in her quiet gentleness. My role in William’s life changed after Helen’s death. Until then, I gave my attention to my mother-in-law, while Charlie spent time with his dad. The two slapped on their tool belts and made multiple runs to Home Depot. Later, when it was just the three of us, I noticed how William lingered at the breakfast table, eager to talk to me. Charlie took the hint and wandered off, leaving the two of us to discuss the things men don’t talk about with each other. My father-in-law had things to say, but mostly, he was a champion listener. He remembered stories I told him about my family and friends, and he asked about them by name. I could tell him about my work, my yoga classes, a new recipe, neighborhood gossip, or some TV show I liked…and he showed interest in it all. We shared a love of genealogy, Tennessee, and the comic strip Lou Ann. William taught me that “98 percent of the things we worry about never happen.” He was imperturbable, unfailingly polite, physically graceful, an old-fashioned gentleman who, even after he used a cane, opened the car door for me. Until the end, he favored wearing a much-mended cardigan sweater because so many women had complimented him on it. A man of his generation, it wasn’t easy for him to say I love you. Recognizing that, Holly once teased him: “I love you Granddad, but it’s okay if you don’t say it back.” And then suddenly, it became easier. As I was leaving him one afternoon last winter, I took his hand and kissed him on the forehead. He looked up and without any prompting said, “I love you.” But I already knew that. My father-in-law loved women…and we returned the favor. Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Restland Funeral Home and Memorial Park, 13005 Greenville Avenue, at Restland Road, Dallas, TX 75243.
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