Dorothy Garrett Smith

Dorothy Garrett Smith (c. 1932 - August 8, 1990) was the first woman to have served as president of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, a position which she held from December 1989 until her sudden death eight months later during the administration of Governor Buddy Roemer.^[1]

Background

Smith was either a native of Bastrop in Morehouse Parish in northeast Louisiana^[2] or Springhill in north Webster Parish near the Arkansas state line. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, she graduated from Springhill High School and attended Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia.^[3] However, the Minden Press-Herald reported that she did not move to Springhill until 1957, when she was about twenty-five years of age and therefore would not have graduated from Springhill High School.^[2]

Political life

A Democrat, Smith in the summer of 1970 defeated two opponents to win a seat on the Webster Parish School Board, an institution on which she served for the next sixteen years.^[4]Smith was the parish school board vice-president under presidents Marlon Pope of Cotton Valley and Henry G. Hobbs and Bob Parker, both of Minden.^[5]

Smith was elected in the primary in 1987 to the BESE board for Louisiana's 4th congressional district (since a revised configuration). She polled 86,414 votes (56.6 percent). Republican James C. Gardner, Jr., of Shreveport, the son of former Mayor James C. Gardner, polled 41,378 votes (27.1 percent). Another Democrat, Jerry Sumrall, received 24,938 votes (16.3 percent).^[6]

Previously, Smith had been an aide to Governors Edwin W. Edwards and Roemer.^[2] She was formerly the president of the Louisiana School Boards Association, having unseated the incumbent George Richard in 1981,^[5] and the Southern Association of School Boards.^[7]

Smith won the BESE presidency in 1989 by a six-to-five vote among her colleagues. A month before her death, she had narrowly survived an attempt by her colleagues, including Jesse Bankston of Baton Rouge and Carson Keith Killen of St. Amant in Ascension Parish, to oust her from the presidency.^[1] Smith died in Schumpert Medical Center in Shreveport of a heart attack while undergoing treatment for leukemia. She was fifty-eight at the time of her death.^[3] Roemer called Smith "a woman of great courage even in the face of debilitating illness. She continued to dedicate her life to the children."^[7]

Walter C. Lee of Shreveport, the Caddo Parish school superintendent, won Smith's seat on the BESE board in a special election held on March 23, 1991. Lee prevailed with 15,161 votes (58.9 percent). Republican Sandra Worley Long trailed with 7,128 (27.7 percent), and a second Democrat, Eliot S. Knowles, Jr., held 3,460 votes (13.4 percent). Lee carried majorities or pluralities in all nine parishes in the district.^[8]After twenty-three years, Lee still serves on the BESE board and is its longest-tenured member, but he is under indictment for double-billing of travel expenditures.^[9]

Smith was married to Gerald Smith, a former member of the Webster Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body, akin to the county commission in other states. She had three sons, Michael Smith, Gerald Garrett Smith, and Timothy Smith. She was a member of Central Baptist Church in Springhill. She is interred at Springhill Cemetery.^[2]

References