Elizabeth Y. Smith

Elizabeth Yvonne Smith was born on October 25, 1923 in Muskogee, Oklahoma to parents Ed Williams and Laura Sanders. She spent most of her early years in Oklahoma City, where she was raised by her father, aunt and maternal grandmother. She graduated from high school in 1941 and her dad relocated to Denver, Colorado when she was 18. He wanted her to attend college there but Liz had other ideas so she joined her mother in Lawton, Oklahoma.

While journeying to a drug store in Lawton in 1941, she met a tall, handsome staff sergeant named Sherman Smith who left with her phone number. This initiated a love story that blossomed into a marriage of almost 68 years. He was a gentleman from the beginning, she said, courting her mother and charming her sisters as intensely as he wooed her. She often quipped that whenever he came over the house to visit, he talked more to her mother than he did to her. They were married on June 13, 1942.

The next phase of her life was spent as the wife of an ambitious military man. Staff Sgt. Smith entered Officers Candidate School at Fort Sill a month after the wedding. He graduated and was promoted to second lieutenant with the all-black 93rd Infantry Division. He was transferred first to Little Rock, Arkansas, and then Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where their only child, Sherman Jr., was conceived. Sherman was deployed with the Tuskegee Airmen to the Pacific island of Biak, where he served in the Pacific Theater as a surveillance pilot.

When World War II ended, they moved to Fort Eustis, Va. After that, they were stationed in Japan and then Germany until 1959, when he was transferred to Fort Ord, CA. He retired as Major from the army shortly thereafter.

The Smiths bought a home on Wanda Street in Seaside in 1961. However, Liz told Sherman that if they were living that close to the ocean, she wanted to see it! Subsequently, in 1962, they found the house they wanted and were among the first to integrate Seaside's Ord Terrace, an area of the city from which black families were banned until the early 1960s.

In addition to raising their only son, Liz and Sherman adopted their grandson, Vincent, who among other things participated in a NAACP talent competition, the national Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO). Liz served a term as local chair of that organization.

She was a 42-year, platinum and charter alumna of the Monterey Bay chapter of Links, Inc. She was the founder of the Mrs. and Mr. NAACP local fundraising contest in the early 1970s, and she also served as a deaconess for over 20 years at First Baptist Church in Pacific Grove, CA. One of her most favorite hobbies was bowling. She continued participating in senior leagues up until the age of 90.

Of all things, most importantly, she was a believer in Jesus Christ. Over the last few months of her life, she would repeatedly say “I don’t know why God still has me here after all these years, but obviously there’s something left for me to do. I don’t have any pains, I’m not hurting. God has been good to me!” She transitioned into the arms of her Savior on June 24, 2016.

She is survived by her grandson Vincent Smith (wife Christy), her nephew John Smith who was her principal caregiver for the last 6 years of her life, her brother Eddie Debbs, and numerous other nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her husband Sherman Smith Sr., in 2010, and her son Sherman Smith Jr., in 2005.