laura hough smith

When I first met Wesley’s dad, I understood every third word he said. His Southern drawl was so thick I could not make out what he was saying, so I nodded dumbly during our talks. I offered occasional noises of agreement and hoped no one noticed that this Missouri-born girl was not following the heavily-accented conversation.

Despite that initial communication barrier, my father-in-law, Harry Smith, became one of my most favorite people on earth and not because he regularly and readily threatened to kill anyone who crossed me.

This gentle giant was a soldier before he was a banker, a business owner and lastly the mayor of Greenwood. His 6-foot height made him huge to me, and he could certainly be scary when he wanted to be. Yet, he pleaded with Wesley and me to allow him to give his granddaughters a puppy, and when we said no, he made up for it for buying them whatever their hearts desired. The impossibly big teddy bear? Sure. No toy cost too much; no toy was too big. He never spoiled them, but he delighted in their pleasure. He was not buying their love and adoration because he also gave them the best gift of all: his time. He read books with Mary Fin. Lollie often helped out in his massive and beautiful rose garden.

Among the rows of roses, his backyard was an oasis for wildlife. Hummingbirds flocked to feeders, sunflowers grew wild in their patches, and squirrels scampered atop the fence to eat sunflower seeds from a feeder attached to a post. I watched in astonishment one afternoon as a squirrel scampered down a fence post, scurried across the backyard, climbed up Harry’s pants leg and ate seeds from his outstretched hand.

Harry Smith was unapologetically conservative. This was a man who fought in Vietnam but didn’t want that fact used during his mayoral campaigns. We do know, though, that he earned a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, but he gave the actual medals to a young boy, the son of another soldier, that he helped entertain on the plane ride home. He told us later that he gave them away because he hadn’t wanted his mom to ask what he did to earn them. Yes, he must have been a valiant fighter, but the memory he most often recalled was his dressing up as Santa Claus for children in a German orphanage.

Harry believed in the Second Amendment and had a dealer’s license so he could buy up as many as he pleased. After our house was broken into Wesley became hyper-vigilant. He slept on the couch and woke at the slightest noise; he trimmed our landscaping to make several watchpoints. After a week, Harry decided Wesley needed to rest, and knowing it would put Wesley at ease, he came over to stand guard.

On that day in May, our shining knight unfolded his giant frame from the silver Jaguar convertible wearing a holster with a gun on each hip. He also wielded a shotgun in both arms, grinning from ear to ear. As was custom for that time of year, he also brought a half-dozen used coffee tins full of roses from his gardens. His arrival was our comic relief, but he took his role as our watchman seriously. When Wesley woke in the middle of the night and crept slowly down the hall, Harry, by all appearances asleep in the chair in our den, silently and ever-so-slightly reached for his pistol.

In the 1970s when he and Perry moved back to Greenwood with their children, neighbors told him not to allow his children to play in a nearby park. The neighbors suspected drug dealers had made the park their base. One day, he walked over and found a couple of guys — much too old for the swings and slides — sitting at a picnic table; he introduced himself. He repeated the rumor about the drug deals and said his children would be coming over to play, and that if there was any trouble at all — from anyone in the park — he’d find those two young men and kill them.

His ferocity was wonderful when he was on your side, but when we met I was a journalist, a profession for which he had nothing but disdain. My stomach knotted as Harry, the then-mayor of Greenwood, peppered me with questions about how we reporters in Vicksburg treated our mayor. During these visits I was always desperate for an interruption or distraction that would lead to a change in the subject. Those conversations were dicey, and I was always glad to have survived, but one afternoon after Wesley and I had been married a while, Harry touched on a subject that struck a nerve with me, and I, for once, didn’t back down. From that afternoon on, Harry Smith got as good as he gave. I think that’s what he’d been waiting on from me all along.

I could always count on some shocking comment from him; Harry Smith would say what you were thinking but wouldn’t dare say. Many a night as we left Greenwood, he’d stand in his Orvis slippers in the driveway and tell off-color jokes about Mississippi State with delight and with a real live twinkle in his eye. He’d laugh as he’d shut our car doors and kiss us goodbye.

He was that way even when he was sick and flipped the bird behind the backs of rude nurses in the hospital. One sweet nurse told him she would freeze his Ensure if that would make it more palatable.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” she offered.

“What I want is for you to take the damn thing and throw it out the window,” he replied.

In December of 2015, a few weeks before he died, he gave us a lot of silly gifts as he did most every year. He ordered a beautiful triple-layer cake decorated with Santa and a Christmas tree. A few days later, two Dutch Kringle pastries arrived, and then on Christmas Day he sent a lemon pound cake. He gave us tin boxes of cookies that play Christmas carols. He ordered so much candy for my daughters that year that I was still giving it to my students almost a year later.

Earlier in the year, he’d given us several birthday candles that spin and play the tune of “Happy Birthday to You” when lighted. I don’t remember him giving us so many, but I’m still finding them tucked into the back of drawers, and all the members of my family have had at least one birthday with this crazy contraption.

I suppose that was the irony of Harry. He was tall and serious and gruff but sweet and gentle and so very loving. He kissed me on the lips every time he saw me and he cheerfully told me cringe-worthy stories. On the afternoon of Mary Fin’s second birthday party, he and I crashed beside one another on the couch. He was reading a newspaper story about a huge Powerball jackpot and asked what I would do with the millions; I asked him in return. He said he’d leave Greenwood.

“Would you sell the house, then?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“What would you do with it?”

“Abandon it.”

He never failed to make me laugh. I loved his dry sense of humor, his wit, his intelligence. I loved him for the daddy he was to Wesley and Laura Ann and the granddaddy he was to my girls. I loved him for loving me so wholly, and I miss him so much.

My father-in-law died on Jan. 12, 2016. His legacy is best summed up in a story the Rev. Peter Gray told in his homily.

The Episcopal church in Greenwood doesn’t allow modern music, but when Gray visited Harry in the hospital, Harry said he preferred to have “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World” played at the service; Gray, hoping to uphold church traditions, was noncommittal. A few weeks later, as the church and its members prepared for Harry’s funeral service, the women of the church matter-of-factly asked Gray: “You know the music he wanted, right?” It was a done deal in their minds; Harry would get his way. Peter still hedged.

As the conversation kept happening with more and more church ladies, it finally dawned on Gray. As these same women had visited Harry in his last few weeks, Harry had made sure they knew his wishes.

As Gray said, “I had been out-campaigned.”

That, indeed, was our politician, our veteran, our protector, our confidant, our teddy bear, our Pop, our Harry.