Smith Family

Hello family & friends,

As I settle into my 71st year on earth I find myself thinking back on the seasons of my life.  And, really, I owe the privilege of that reflection to my loving mother & father. The lives they lived deserve to be remembered and recorded. They were of Tom Brokaw’s “greatest generation,” lived through the great depression, WWII, and all the wars well into the twenty-first century. They saw the beginning of the information age and dad was an early pioneer of public television production. He was a radio DJ, a high school history instructor and a war hero – though he would never say that.

And mom, a beautiful Italian-American woman from Bradford, Pennsylvania with a heart of gold and a humanity that easily made friends around the world. She was the glue, and everyone loved my mom, Dorothy Ann.

I got to experience Bradford until I was 13 years old. I remember it as an archtypal bustling small eastern American town of mostly Italian immigrants flourishing in post-war America. Then dad and mom decided to move the family to a Pacific island where dad had recently been involved in World War II as a Marine. Thus began my brother Mark and my island adventures and later migration to the mountains of Montana. This is the beginning of telling this story and there will be more to come. Please enjoy a little family history exploration.

—Dan J. Smith

Daniel W. Smith and Dorothy Ann Ventura wedding, May 24, 1952