Miss Smith worked for 35 years as a reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser-Journal (now the Montgomery Advertiser) until her retirement in 1963. She was a reporter and a feature writer, and her greatest love was covering Montgomery County news. She was especially known for her “Country Chatter” column. She was a “country correspondent” for the Montgomery Independent as well. After her retirement, she continued to write a weekly column about the people and activities in south Montgomery County for a local weekly newspaper.

The late C.M. Stanley, who was editor of the Advertiser-Journal during much of Miss Smith’s time there once wrote, “Her greatest value is her wide acquaintance, her warm personality, and her interest in so many different people and things.” There were many, in fact, who believed that Mildred Smith knew more people in Montgomery County on a first name basis than any other single person. Although her devotion to, and her love for her community was great, Miss Smith was also independent-minded and determined, without a trace of vanity or self-indulgence. Joe Azbell of the Independent said of Mildred, “You could not flatter Mildred Smith. If you praised her work, she would reply, ‘It’s what I get paid for.’ ”

Before She Was a Writer

Prior to her journalism career in Montgomery that began in 1928, she had also been a teacher, and for a brief time, a reporter for a Birmingham paper. Education for the area’s young people was always a priority for Miss Smith, and through her personal efforts a number of area students attended high school and college, whether it was a direct financial contribution that made school attendance possible for a student, or supplying school clothes or school supplies for young people — always anonymously.

Mildred Sarah Smith was born in Dublin in south Montgomery County in 1893. She graduated from Girls’ High School in Montgomery and from Howard College (precursor of today’s Samford University ) in Birmingham in 1923 with a bachelor’s degree in English. Early in her life she took a leadership role. At Howard, she was a member of the Girls’ Glee Club, a reporter and supervisor of the Shelburne Literary Society, a member of the Crimson (newspaper) staff, a senior class reporter, a member of the Y.W.C.A. finance committee, and an English assistant. She was selected for Hypatia, one of the highest academic honors at Howard (and remains one of the highest honors at Samford today). After her graduation she became one of the first women to enter the journalism field.

A Woman of Many Contributions

Known for her many civic contributions, perhaps she is best known as the organizer of the Mon•Cre Telephone Cooperative in the early 1950s; without her efforts, it might have been much longer before telephone service was initiated in the area. It was largely because of her work in bringing not only phone service, but also electrical service to her beloved Montgomery County that brought her recognition in the first edition of “Who’s Who Among American Women” in 1957.

She was a member of the Presbyterian Church, and served on the board of directors of the Montgomery Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, the Montgomery County Crippled Children’s Society, and the Montgomery Council of Home Demonstration Clubs. She was also a member of the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce. Miss Smith was the first woman in Alabama to be made an honorary member of the Alabama Future Farmers.

Memories of Miss Smith are still with us today. She made her own clothes, drove a small, gas-saving, economy car, didn’t attend movies, or take part in what she considered “frivolous” things. She always insisted there was oil on her property somewhere, often pointing out to visitors oil slicks on the surface of the creek that ran through the property. “It’s got to come from somewhere,” she would astutely observe. But perhaps the memory still repeated most frequently is about her annual Sunday-before-Christmas parties held in her rambling, antique-filled family home near Dublin that were attended by newspaper people from all across Alabama.

Guests were invited to drop in during the all-day open house, and if they wished, they could cut down a Christmas tree from her heavily wooded property to take home with them. According to one Advertiser-Journal writer shortly after her death, “These affairs were genuine old-fashioned Christmas gatherings . . . ‘guests’ swapped stories as they warmed themselves before roaring log fires at each end of the house, and stuffed themselves with the great feast of ham and turkey and pies and cakes which she and her neighbors had prepared. It was almost as if it were a scene taken directly from Truman Capote’s classic Alabama fairy tale, ‘A Christmas Memory.’ ” One of the largest — and oldest, it was said, at 200 years old — magnolia trees in Montgomery County was in her front yard, and provided greenery for countless weddings.

The home burned to the ground in 1975 after being struck by lightning. For the next three years, Mildred would live in a small trailer on the property, her health failing. Ironically, says Joe Azbell, her vision became impaired in the fire “that destroyed her home, her scrapbooks, her papers, and her beloved keepsakes. Sight for someone who loves to write and read has meaning beyond the norm.”

Honest Fame

Mildred Smith was a true pioneer in communications. After a lifetime devoted to writing about and reporting on life in its myriad shapes and forms, and becoming the formative influence for, and organizer of a telecommunications cooperative that would open the world to its subscribers in ways she could never have imagined, Miss Smith died at age 85 on March 2, 1978 at Baptist Medical Center in Montgomery. Mildred Smith would be proud of today’s Mon•Cre Telephone Cooperative.

It shouldn’t be to anyone’s surprise that Mildred Smith lived out the motto she chose at her graduation: “Unblemished let me live, or die unknown; O grant me an honest fame, or grant me none! “She does indeed have “an honest fame.”