Lucy Smith — A heart for lifelong service

It’s impossible to pigeonhole Lucy Smith’s work and volunteer experiences into one field — she has spent a lifetime committed to humanity.

From saying yes to countless local community projects to teaching English as a second language to standing in as a birth attendant and driving an ambulance in Africa, she has volunteered in myriad ways here at home and in diverse world cultures.

The daughter of a Navy surgeon, Smith was born on the Camp LeJeune Marine Corps base in North Carolina. Because of her father’s military career, by the time she was in high school her family had moved eight times, setting the stage for her ability to adapt to new environments.

She graduated with high honors in 1975 from Indiana University with a degree in pre-law, but wasn't sure about going on to law school so enrolled in a multitude of graduate classes in fields ranging from business to adult education.

One professor told her she had enough credits to sink a battleship.

Having been a volunteer tutor through high school and college, Smith saw education as a marketable career so she acquired her elementary education certification and, in 1975 started working at a day treatment center for preschoolers and kindergarteners.

But her heart was set on going overseas.

“I was young. I wanted to see the world,” Smith said.

She was able to get an inexpensive ticket to Tokyo, Japan and while there visited an international elementary school.

“I went into the kindergarten class and the teacher was a little frantic because she had to make a presentation to the PTA that afternoon,” she said. Knowing Smith had a background in elementary and preschool education the teacher asked her for help.

“I said, ‘Sure!’ I did a lot of games and songs. I was a novelty for the kids and we had a blast,” Smith said.

At the end of her visit the headmaster offered her a job — the kindergarten teacher was leaving the following year — then gave her 24 hours to make a decision.

“I didn’t sleep all night, and I thought why would I not do that?” she said.

She returned to Tokyo a month later and found a Japanese dormitory for international business professionals, with a second floor housing maids and babysitters; Smith also became a nanny.

“I was living with 26 Japanese women ages 18 to 72 and these women were so welcoming to me,” she said. “That became my wonderful immersion in Japanese language and culture.”

Smith remained there a year, also teaching English as a second language, before moving to Colorado (her family’s favorite skiing vacation destination) and finding work in export marketing, working in both marketing and legal departments, which dovetailed with her educational background.

IN BOULDER, Smith met and married a Montana native and the couple moved to the Flathead Valley in 1989.

“The Flathead was a small community then,” Smith said. “So finding work was a little bit more challenging.”

Smith turned to the library to see about becoming a volunteer tutor, learned about the organization Literacy Volunteers of America, and took its tutor training. The Flathead County Affiliate’s director was leaving so Smith teamed up with Jana Goodman to co-direct the local nonprofit for a few years. Smith continued on as director 12 more years, helping to greatly expand its services and outreach.

At age 50, still interested in volunteer overseas work, in 2003 she took a three plus-year position with Lalmba, a nonprofit humanitarian relief organization she’d long been a donor for, working in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Kenya directing and managing programs providing children and elders education, medical care and other basic needs.

“I went from the small, desperately poor desert country of Eritrea to the high-altitude rainforest jungles of Ethiopia,” she said. In Kenya she trained a local team how to manage their offices in modern ways.

“They did many things by hand very well, but these clinics are seeing more than 100-plus patients a day,” she said. “The people were doing mighty work.”

Smith says those years in East Africa were rich because she was learning so much about different cultures and languages.

“Everyday was a reminder of how enormously privileged I am in my Western life,” she said.” And the ease of living I take for granted.”

When she returned to Kalispell in 2006, she resumed serving on the Hockaday Museum of Art’s board, ultimately becoming the museum’s director until 2011, a job she greatly enjoyed.

In 2012 she took another big leap by saying yes when asked if she would become the Flathead Community Foundation’s first director.

Through all the different paths Smith had traveled with nonprofits, she says being able to get the message out about the importance of supporting community foundations was a natural for her.

“The work deepened my respect for our nonprofit community and our community of donors and supporters,” she said.

Smith retired in 2017 from the Flathead Community Foundation (which merged with the Whitefish Community Foundation in 2020) so she could devote more time to caring for her aging parents in Colorado. Both her parents died last year within weeks of each other.

SMITH’S OTHER stewardship roles in the Flathead community are far and wide. She’s been a Rotarian since the ‘90s, her father having been a Rotarian for 65 years. She is the area governor and district’s liaison with the state organization, and has worked on international Rotary projects in Guatemala and Mexico.

“What I love about Rotary is that it has service as its mission,” she said. “It brings leaders together and takes on the responsibility for making the world a better place.”

Smith also serves on the Whitefish Community Foundation’s board and is a member of the local nonprofit Women Who Wine charitable organization.

A longtime member and past board member of the Glacier Symphony and Chorale, she got involved in Flathead Valley Community College’s One Campaign to raise money to build the new College Center’s McClaren Hall, Glacier Symphony’s new performance home. She has also sung with the Crown of the Continent Choir and the Kalispell Compline Choir, and this summer attended one of Bobby McFerrin’s week-long circle singing workshops, along with more than 100 other participants.

Since 2015, Smith has participated in the Pan Mass Challenge in Massachusetts, a ride that draws close to 6,000 cyclists and raises money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Every August, she rides a double century — 200 miles in two days — from Sturbridge to Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, riding with the husband and daughter of a dear friend treated for liver cancer there, as well as in honor of her cousin who was treated for lymphoma.

“You know you’re raising a lot of money for research, patient care and especially children’s oncology. It matters to so many people,” she said. “And it matters to you because you’re also affected by other people’s lives.

“That’s why I keep jumping in on all these different community projects,” Smith said. “It’s nice to be of the age where I’m the helper — sort of the general community volunteer rather than lead — having seen and experienced the difficulties and challenges people in the world face and how they survive and thrive by helping each other. You see that everywhere. People have a way of lifting each other up … even in circumstances that are bleak.

“Here, we do have people who have needs. People who are struggling,” she said. “Our community is rich with opportunities and dilemmas. When we pull together we bring out the best of our skills and resources. That’s what I enjoy the most. I find it thrilling to notice the strengths, intelligence and great judgment of all the different people here.”

“My college advisor once half-joked that my biggest problem would be choosing my path from the many different things that interested me,” Smith said. “She was right, but I think I solved the dilemma by choosing more than one! … still choosing.”