Mary Lou Smith and Will Smith

00:01 I'm Mary Lou Smith, and I'm 76 years of age. Today is Sunday, October 20th night 19th, 2019. We're in Dallas, Texas and I'm interviewing my husband of many years.

00:22 My name is Will Smith. I'm 77. This is Sunday, October 20th, 2019 in Dallas, Texas. And then my partner is Marilu and my wife.

00:35 Well, we've known each other for a long time for 57 years and we've been married fifty-three of those years. Tell me what you remember about. The first time we met in Peoria, Illinois University in the registration week and

00:57 My friend was working there ROTC table to recruit people to join the ROTC and I came by about 15 minutes before is supposed to be up at 3 on the Thursday September 13th, 1962 and found you sitting at the next table helping with the panhellenic registration for people were going to go through rush. So having nothing better to do for the next 15 minutes to finish time I talk to you and we found out we had a lot in common and end before we parted. I had your phone number and 3 days later. We had our first date and I was impressed because you were majoring in physics. I was an English sociology major and physics was Way Beyond me.

01:57 And I was also impressed that you were giving your friend ride home. So where were you living when we met I live with my mother in a federal housing project in Peoria which had about a thousand apartments and and the people living there were basically either on welfare or close to it and making minimum wage jobs to get through and just have them but fortunately I had a scholarship to go to college and and there's just entering a point where I could really make some money in the summer time, which I had done and between me and also invited getting a teaching assistantship for the start of my junior year.

02:53 And it was a fortunate time for us to meet. I was a software you were a junior and you told me later that you were barely eating before then. So you had a little bit of money to ask somebody out on a date and I didn't know that at the time but I grew up in a household with two parents who went through the depression and we're very frugal. So when we dated I look for the cheapest thing on the menu. So when did you decide we had a future together Progressive thing, but probably within 6 or 8 months. I thought you were probably the right one and the question was so convincing you and your parents that I was right one because my family had been very dysfunctional family and as a consequence

03:54 Miss divorces and and problems in the family unclear that that I was good at good candidate for Marysville middle class. So. Hyde writing writing writing show your parents had some misgivings about whether I was the right person or not.

04:14 Well, and when you ask my dad about marrying made you remember what he said to you. You said you thought I was late three years later and he said I think you're a fine young man. But I just have one thing to say is if if you can get married and you're on your own expecting any money from my wife and not me and I think later we joked he also said there are no returns. I think that's one thing that I hope we both found attractive in each other. I certainly didn't you that you had a great sense of humor and I wasn't sure about getting married and we could've afforded it anyway, so it was three years before we are engaged and 4 before we were married.

05:15 So then we lived in a very prestigious area of St. Louis after marrying. How in the world did that happen though? I was in graduate school at the University and you were had just completed your first year there and I was in graduate school and I was at the physics part one day and found a note saying that someone who lived in a very fancy house needed someone to help take care of the grounds and and do some maintenance work around that to 2 Acres property that he had. So I moved into his house for the first year my graduate school and then if I knew I was about to get married. I told him I was going to leave you said would you like to live in the carriage house and take care of things in there? And I said, yeah, that sounds like a good deal. So we lived it.

06:15 A very prestigious address in the carriage house for another three and a half years and a small bath and three rooms and I remember we watched a black and white TV that rolled when it was hot, but in the winter time, if we put our coats on it quit rolling a but you could see your breath. So we felt like we were watching football games while actually being there so and and when I did my practice social work when I put down my address my supervisor looked at me and I looked at the address and somehow they didn't match so she knew that it was a place where multi-millionaires live. We were not those if that point at all.

07:15 You've always said you were very lucky because in high school Sputnik the first Russian satellite went up. Why why did you feel lucky? Cuz my poor family background in the fact that I was the only person who looks like he might finish high school. Going to college with and without any ability to pay their tuition was a stretch dream. So I was as a sophomore in high school figuring are probably going to end up going to Caterpillar and working as an apprentice and working my way up to that company.

07:53 And in Taco Berwyn and about them two or three weeks later than United States for me just first attempt to launch a satellite and it was Vanguard satellite rocket the naval research lab responsible for work and lifted off of bad and I'm about to turn into links the rocket in and blew up so suddenly we were way behind because I wasn't talking to a February for a Warner Von Braun rocket to be launched with a satellite to get to the first US satellite in orbit and it was that interlude there in a few months time that time that people really get excited that we've been rushing through Windows the space race, and we needed to put on science and technology in order to keep

08:53 And suddenly the floodgates opened in a lot of money is harder for going into education, especially for a technical people to go to college and that's how I got to go to college because I chose the wrong horse turn to try to launch the first satellite with and watch the Von Braun satellite first first. It probably would have succeeded in and we're going to maybe a week or so out of fear or about the Russian ahead of us in the end.

09:25 Emphasis on on funding for Science and Technology would probably been much more diminished by the fact that we weren't that far behind but but a few months of festering measure a lot of things being done. So Illinois State scholarship that covered tuition which then I began to exceed it. So we took out a loan but it wasn't very much by today's standards and you got a teaching assistantship for graduate school that finally let you earn a PhD in physics predoctoral Fellowship to help me finish. My Ph.D was the last year they awarded those. So I just barely ahead of the I was becoming a shutdown in and funding for a lot of things that were technical visit. The bloom is off the rose and in

10:25 The Russians are so by 1970 when you got your PhD the jobs for physicists had dwindled shall we say in fact some of your friends were laid off but you got three job offers and took one with Sandy a research lab, which was in Albuquerque, which was a place. I'd never thought about living but it sounded interesting. Why did you feel lucky when you took that job, especially from what you found out later. They finally offered me the job right after Christmas and in 20 or 1977 or 69 going and I would show up in hurry April after finishing my PFD working a little time off to go to work. And then when I ride in Albuquerque, I just got

11:25 It laid off 500 people that I'm about 2 weeks before so I called my supposed boss and said to do I still have a job or yes. No, no worries. So I went to work their butt and I had a successful career there, but after another for years I laid off a total of 2000 people out of 8500. So it begins with a little questionable whether they know long-time career there or not. What was your name a military pilot production system for against of flash blindness, and and also which happens when a nuclear bomb dropped.

12:26 Ed Norton how to weld when I was young and so I appreciated the same technology could be used in a welding helmet which I demonstrated to their welders and at Sandia and also to a company in the San Francisco Bay area that actually made welding helmets in and eventually it became a item that you can buy it Home Depot or Lowe's on for about 50 bucks the government car sound at Patton because you were working at a government facility. But yeah, I was pretty impressed. Any you've had always had an interest in politics and how did that fit in with what happened next in your career? So I was interested in politics Seminary age. I'm going to go to the Saturday movies at boys watch the news films very very intently to see what was going on in the world, but

13:26 As I was working at Sandy, I would get involved with the Institute of electrical and electronic Engineers, which is engineering society and they establish a scholarship or Fellowship to go into work for congress for a year on a committee staffer in a personal office. And so I applied for that in 1974 and and awarded one of the two that they offered Nationwide. So I went to Washington DC to work on a committee staff in the field of energy. Do you research and development? Because I had no knowledge about that sort of stuff could be having done some sort of cell research at Sandia before I left. So I spent the next turn 9 years 4 months and three days and working in the Congress as a professional staff member on energy research and development area and on the Armed Forces.

14:26 National Defense area on the Senate armed services committee vision for my last assignment so I became a subject matter expert on a whole variety of things but also became a copies negotiator and we got a lot of things done in that theory which they do not get done today and the son probably got the equivalent of about 6 masters degrees in various subjects, but just by The Brute Force we having to deal with things that the required quickly track of the number of days you work for congress now, why was that a very lengthy week There's 75 hours a week for 9 plus years and I remember a threatening one time to keep track of how many hours you put in and you wouldn't let me.

15:26 I think was more like 89 are fridge and you remember you took a change my underwear because you spend a couple of nights there and I had a change of clothes and use the bathroom to freshen up because I work until 2 in the morning and 1/2 be back at the desk doing things by 7 a.m. So it wouldn't make a lot of sense to take a couple hours to get to get home the back and and interpretation that you worked for Senator scooped accent Henry Jackson from Washington State and you always marveled at his stamina and he was probably the age we are now and he was doing these all-nighters to so people worked really hard back then and accomplished a lot. So he was 71 when he died in 1983, but he was a very hard worker in the end.

16:25 Chenango to be in my office at 9 at night in and hit someone in the cloakroom would call up and say as you can you come down to the cloakroom send your Jackson or send your Glen or some country wants to see you and I can go down and spend another 30 minutes talking about things need to be done. So I was a very demanding job, but it was the thing that was redeemed it is that I truly enjoyed the the respect and appreciation of a lot of very important people in the in the Congress and you were help you help to make help them make compromises about things because you knew what they needed to have accomplished for their state because you are working mostly for senators spent one year in the house, but no it was mostly in the Senate and I think you also told me that you knew

17:25 Who you could trust as far as staff people and senators and your reputation not only yours personally, but there is we're really wouldn't matter because if people fudge done things they got a reputation that they weren't trustworthy so and that counted for a lot. If you lied that day your reputation was mud in his people would not trust you so being straightforward.

18:04 General what you're trying to do an n in and get their general idea. What they wanted to do is freak me to find common ground on getting something that would work for the for the country. And that is what I was already already preaching. I received from from some Senators with you figure out what the right thing to do for the country is and we agree with you. We will figure out how to get it past costing. So ironically you after the 9 plus years were looking around to see what else you could do and had some job offers and some interviews, but we had you had a break and I had a break from work and we were in Italy when you read a newspaper on the in the airport for the

19:04 Light coming back home to Washington DC and it said it said that the Senator Henry M Jackson had died of a Aortic Aneurysm and measure no longer with us. And so with the interesting sidelight to that as I had already decided. I wanted to leave the Congo and I had arranged an interview in Seattle on September 3rd 1983 with the Boeing Company.

19:39 And the funeral for Senator Jackson with his on September 2nd in 1983 and suburb of Seattle and I flew from Washington DC out there on your Force to with Vice President George HW Bush and probably 15 or 20 senior government official Dion that in and went to the memorial service on 2nd September and went to bowling on the third round interview and two weeks later. They offered me a job and I got some redemption in that in that they weren't hiring me because of my Association Senator Jackson because he was no longer around it to for me to try to influence to do something that they wanted to do there. They had seen enough of my work in in Congress and both energy and defense that they thought I had something to contribute.

20:39 Show me the Irish hired him as a as a person to really worry about though. I was going to happen in their area technology politics Foreign Relations funding for programs in and try to enter assessor all that in and give them my best judgment about what to do to be ready for the next next year or next five years next ten years so we can so we went to Seattle a place. I'd never thought about living and probably you didn't either and shortly after you started work there. You unexpectedly got called to participate in a quite important meeting because your boss couldn't go can you tell us about that?

21:30 I've been there about 2 months and there was a meeting with about a hundred fifty people in a big conference room and that I went to few minutes early and down the room fills there so I could only sit in the back row or the meeting.

21:49 And a bird presenting a the details of a proposal they were working on to replace the Air Force One that that the president's been flying on since the 1960s from 1707 at the time that was created now about 25 years old and so they needed to replace it.

22:14 And this proposal because they were preparing for the Air Force and when and which I have been working with the Air Force on it for 18 months was now getting close to do submission that we had about six months to go before they would submit it to

22:29 So they discussed at Great length in in meniscal detail about what the best about the solution was determined for replacing the 767 commercial jet that would be modified to meet the requirements for the president to airplane.

22:49 And after listening this excruciating detail right now, I am at the end of their raise my hand and asked them. Why do you think the Secret Service will let the president fly on a two engine ear pain because of 767 they only had two engines and the 707 had four engines and station was the date 767 Could Fly for a few thousand miles on one engine. So they're not too worried that I didn't talk about what happened to and just went outside for about 5 minutes about how Russian and and so if they are happy to go to

23:43 I'm only human and do after they taking another round of you. So I said if I were you I would check him and the Ginn harangue me from having a room full of people on multi-room. I did not know and who had not did not know me wondering what this who's this guy? And he has any questions. I persisted to the point that they actually went back to Wichita and talk to the chief of the division there. Who said well, maybe we ought to ask so they they went to Michael Deaver who just left the Reagan White House has a head to be a kind of consultant companies in and they hired him to go in and ask her in Secret Service. What do you think about the president fly on a two engine airplane? They said we don't want our guy flying airplanes for the Boeing switched to the 747 as it's before then the md-11 & McDonnell Douglas was producing.

24:43 Three engines is it cost when they won the competition they sold others to other nations around the world for their their chief executive an airplane engine and they're now the process of building three more airplanes on basement 747 airframe for to replace the the airframe that they finally gotten in operation by about 1989. And did they thank you for that cuz I know the answer nobody said but but the important thing is it

25:26 At that point in the history of mowing people did listen to criticism and then react to it as opposed to just blowing it off sometime. But you also told me that by the time you got back to your office your boss who had sent you said what the heck did you say in that meeting? I've had a couple of phone, so welcome to the Boeing Company. So what are some of the things you felt like you accomplished at Boeing?

26:12 I'm

26:13 Work for you for different president of the defensive space group during my time there as a direct report and I think they are appreciated the way I thought about things and then wasn't daunted by anything that I would just get to the bottom of it using same idea to figure out what the right thing to do is and then then then I'll be with the right thing to do is near opinion and and that was mine and a lot of the time you were doing strategic planning and they would ask you for what's called white papers, which is a summary of of the idea supposedly of that person or The Stance of the company about something and you'd be 7 at night and you'd have to have a two-page paper by 8 at night on some topic that you maybe it hadn't even been thinking about

27:13 Or so a lot of pretty stressful quick turnaround demands, but the small staff are they able to do an awful lot of things have done that they needed to have done. So I think you had an enviable situation with that staff because you still occasionally even though you've been retired what 20 some years old boy? Yeah, occasionally when we've gone back have met with them and they really I think felt like it was a very close-knit group. Will you and I are retired now and after living in Plano, Texas for a while, which we picked because we had this checklist of what we wanted and we didn't want to necessarily stay in Seattle cuz it was gloomy a lot of the time so

28:13 We are now in a retirement community. So what kind of activities are you involved in or were you involved in when we first retired?

28:25 I decided to get involved with seeing community in various volunteer assignments. So I worked on for the volunteer on the board of a volunteer organization to help people find volunteers for projects to relieve your Plano and probably a hundred or more.

28:55 Impactful people in the in the community that we're going to be on boards and commissions and then get a city council and after going through that I was on probably seven or eight different Borg over time where I helped that was kind of organizations and hand after having done that for him for another decade. Anyway after I retired I started hearing back because when one of the things I've been

29:27 Come to realize is that all the food intolerance is that I had developed over time and just keep multiplying from h35 on we're probably due to having too much stress in my life. So I started pairing back my my responsibilities and it but I still do a few things to do in to community and also in our retirement community in particular cuz you've added some things went since we went to the retirement community about 2 years ago. So now are you

30:04 Have a schedule that involves meeting with someone to pass their GED exam.

30:17 A line cook who wants to get his GED after having dropped out of high school at the beginning of the junior year and then so I'm teaching him American history and government government and other things instead of science on teaching, you know, anybody that could find who had the record depth of knowledge in that area and you're also a stage prop manager for our chorus the stage manager and kind of kind of make sure that everything runs smoothly for the rehearsal down for their performances so they don't have to worry about that themselves.

31:07 That I've been

31:10 Surprised at their level of appreciation for doing it cuz it doesn't seem like a heavy lifting job, but they they hired me to be a vital part of your operation for moving on stage which might be pretty important to everybody safety and you came up with a logo to put on some of the music stands. And so yeah and and both you and I have been on some committees there that that work to help improve various situations in the community. So it's been an interesting place. How do you remember how we decided to retire there?

32:00 Well made the main reason was it meme.

32:05 New variety of people who already live there through the final Symphony we knew about six couples who were living there and so weak started quizzing some of them about what life was like there and he went through the process of of

32:23 Attending meetings for outside. You're like us to get in a better appreciation for how things were done there. And then so that it was fairly involved evaluation, but probably the one thing in the Tipping Point for me because I have a friend who's involved in helping relocate elderly people into places like that and this woman

32:51 Works for an organization gives about 25 or 30 of these retirement communities him and she's the best one in her experience of working with recommended it to so I was kind of

33:07 One of the other reasons I married to and that my mother finally came around to thinking you were.

33:15 The cat's meow if 30 is language, I guess 1930s language when she wasn't appreciating you immediately after we announced we were getting engaged was that you could fix anything it might take you awhile to figure it out, but you could fix anything so you did for her because my dad wasn't very handy and you did for your mom who is divorced single lady all the time. And you continue to do that and in all the houses. We owned including the one we owned in Plano and the one in Plano was beginning to get older and more problematic and you are up on a two-story ladder or trying to fix a leak in the roof, and I could have imagined you.

34:07 In a hospital somewhere cuz I was on the other end of the ladder. So we sort of said maybe we don't need this big house anymore. So that's that's where we're there. And the other reason is that along the way when we got married, even though we thought about having two kids. We gradually decided we really didn't need any do you remember how our discussion about that thing was that? I was as research scientist hurry on our marriage. I was putting in 75 hours a week doing research and and reading stuff that I needed to know to be able to do it researching and so I concluded it.

34:59 Did reality would be the two of you to spend about 80% of their waking hours of the children with you you feeling in the other 20% and that she might have pretty unbalanced role in the even then, but if you're going to be spending your career going to suffer from from taking the time away from your career and to have them into I get them into preschool or kindergarten and then solve that was going to impact you in a way that I thought you should have more about than I did in the house and by that time we've been married about five years, I think because we decided we shouldn't have kids while we're both in graduate school or at least you were.

35:59 The last to get out of graduate school and we wanted to work two years and pretend that we didn't have my salary so he could see whether we could make it on one salary and by that time. Well, I was working at an organization that had troubled families in troubled kids and show that kind of said maybe when you have a kid everything is not I'll let you know perfect and said that might be a problem. So we sort of talked about it over the next seven years and by that time I was working in a medical research place where I discovered there were a lot of medical problems that families in people had and we finally decided you no no,

36:56 And I've never I've never look back on that decision.

37:04 I think I can sum up my life by noting that.

37:10 You can if you are very poor.

37:13 But you're very motivated and you have some ability. You can greatly enhance your your outcomes in life by five making sure you don't do painted that minimize your your success by by getting someone pregnant early in life or getting expensive habits that you can afford and then

37:41 Planning for the future and and exercising some self-denial on things that you would like to do. But you know that they're not going to help you get to where you want to go in like having some vision of what the possibilities are for yourself and finding mentors and who will help you and champions who will Who will go to bat for you? And that even though they don't have any stake in dealing with you to help you make it to your life is a very critical thing for people can make it but they have to work hard and they have to set a reminder for gratification and and and recognize that they may not achieve everything Wenatchee but life is a lot easier if you if you do those two things because they made chance of having something go wrong is always there and good.

38:41 You can deal with a setback. But if you're not a bad path of that bed that outcomes just start amplifying and multiplying and you can't ever recover some my sister and brother both dropped out of high school and my parents must be the eighth grade and all them struggled their entire life financial and also emotionally and and yet I think we're all very proud of me. And then I understood that I had been able to escape the situation that they are unable to do is make sure you find somebody who is on the same wavelength as you are and and somebody you can have fun with and laugh with two. So, I think we've been very lucky to find each other and remarkably show.