Smith was a driving force behind the creation of the Job Center, Sinclair Foundation, Montgomery County Human Services Levy and Out-of-School Youth Initiative, which reduced the county’s school dropout rate from 25 percent in 1999 to 12 percent in 2006.
“Fred Smith was one of our community’s pillars,” said Mike Parks, president of the Dayton Foundation.
Under Smith, the foundation’s assets rose from 16 funds and $3.3 million in 1979 to 229 funds and almost $29 million in 1989.
Smith was the “single most important civic leader in this region for the last 50 years, primarily because he was able to leverage his institutional and personal influence among so many people and institutions,” said Tom Breitenbach, chief executive of Premier Health Partners.
A New Jersey native, Smith graduated from Cornell and Harvard universities. He was commissioned in the Army Air Corps, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and served at Wright Field in Dayton from 1941-1946.
After World War II, Smith worked at the Huffman Corporation, later Huffy, where he went from marketing manager to president, chief executive and chairman of the board.
With his late wife, Ruth Pfeiffer “Pfeife” Smith, who died in 2004, he raised five sons: Frederick, Geoffrey, Roger, William and J. Bartlett Smith.
“On retirement, I didn’t want to go to the beach or golf course,” Smith told the Dayton Daily News in 2006.
Instead, Smith “worked full time and overtime for the betterment of this community,” said Deborah Feldman, Montgomery County administrator.
Sinclair College President Steven Lee Johnson said the region’s “health care, education, social services, government and civic life are all more sophisticated and effective because of decades of Mr. Smith’s efforts.”
A memorial service will be Saturday at 1 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 33 W. Dixon Ave., Oakwood. The family will greet friends following the service.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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