Adele Ferguson: Smith family of Seattle- a solid model for success

WELL, Black History Month is almost over and I’ve been thinking about who to offer as a role model for young blacks, leaving Barack Hussein Obama Out of it because I know of somebody better.

I give you Sam and Marion Smith and the Smith kids of Seattle.

I knew Sam Smith when he was in the legislature in the House in the 1960s, which he left to become a Seattle city councilman in 1967 I learned all about him from his son, Ron, when we were airplane seatmates returning from the Democratic national convention in Atlanta.. He had gone to the convention to help his dad, who lost a leg to diabetes and used a wheelchair.

Ron was one of six Smith children and had a Ph.D. in education psychology from Dartmouth. His twin, Don, took sociology at Dartmouth and was a systems manager at PACCAR. Carl went to Washington State University and became a personnel consultant. Tony was a Grambling graduate and worked in tool design at Boeing. Steve took business administration at Western Michigan and worked at Boeing. Amelia looked after their parents.

SAM SENT them to different colleges because he wanted them to be distinct individuals, he said. The Smith kids got the word early from their folks: get out and get a job or go to college. You can either pay your expenses at home or save money for college.

Sam held down three jobs (main one a Boeing expediter) to earn money to feed his family and get a college education himself, first taking economics and political science at Seattle University, then a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington.

“He used to fall asleep at the wheel of the car, he was so tired trying to keep up with all he was trying to do,” Ron told me. “I don’t know how he pulled it off. But as you were growing up, Sam would take you out to the university and expose you to the environment, the hallowed halls, have you sit behind a desk.”

Sam’s philosophy was not to push the Smith kids into anything. “Twice a year, as a family,” said Ron, “he’d take us all on, an hour at a time. What do you want to do with your life? Why do you want to do that? You want to be a cowboy, a fireman? And then he made you support your reasons why”

THERE WERE lots of places for youngsters to get into trouble then as there are now, but Sam kept his gang busy with sports. “He insisted,” Ron said. “And Sam was always the quarterback. We were a very close knit family. It was Sam and his family against the world. The neighbors used to say we didn’t need anybody else.”

“The kind of values we were raised with by both parents we took pride in paying our own way. Sam helped us get jobs. Never cushy ones. He felt you had to learn to work even at menial labor. We bought our own school clothes, managed our own money. But if we somehow blew it and needed financial assistance, Sam was always there. The only chiding we got was Sam saying ‘I hope you learned something.”

Politician Sam was always on the go, from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. always working, always helping somebody. When things didn’t go right, his favorite saying was “Such is life.”

“I like to think,” said Ron, “that having those kind of parents gave us a good start at being successful. They did a good job of raising us all as distinct individuals. And I respected Sam just for being dad.”

How’s that for a role model? You couldn’t do better.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69,Hansville, Wa., 98340.)