Note: This is the second in a series by Athens ISD profiling the seven members of the Board of Trustees.
By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Specialist
Eric Smith’s first lessons in leadership and community service were learned by watching his father, Tommy Smith. The elder Smith served eight years as mayor of Athens, 11 as county judge and established a successful and still-prospering lumber yard business.
Today, Eric and his brother, Aaron, run Smith Lumber Company. Eric Smith has taken up the mantle of community works by, among other things, serving on the Athens ISD Board of Trustees, representing Place 5. His first tenure as a district trustee ran from 2005 until 2008, when he chose not to run for re-election. He resumed board membership last year when he was appointed to fill an unexpired term.
Smith and his wife, Tracye, have a sophomore, Samantha, at Athens High School. He graduated himself from AHS in 1988. “Ours was the first class to go a full year at the new high school and graduate,” he said.
He attended Trinity Valley Community College and then the University of North Texas in Denton, where he graduated in 1992 with a major in business and a minor in criminal justice. “I had aspirations of being in the FBI,” Smith said, “but life leads us in different directions.”
He went on to work as an adult probation office for a couple of years, then as a real estate appraiser. Eventually, though, he realized the family business was where he felt most at home. “This is what I love doing,” he said from behind his desk at Smith Lumber Yard. “I worked here since I was in the eighth grade — spring breaks, Christmas breaks, summer breaks. There was always something different going on and new people to meet. I’ve enjoyed it.”
When Smith first joined the board, his daughter, Samantha, was in kindergarten. His motivation to run for election was simple: “I felt like anything I did to improve the district was going to help my daughter and other children.
In the intervening years, he believes there has been progress made in several areas, the most obvious being to the district’s facilities. “There’s been a lot of facilities improvement, like with awnings in front of the intermediate school and in front of South Athens, ingress and egress, turning the old ag building into the softball facility, adding additional parking spaces around the football stadium, acquiring land that’s contiguous to our existing property and so many other things. All that was being discussed when I was first on the board.”
He also is pleased with the personnel in leadership positions, including Superintendent Blake Stiles, who stepped into the position in October of 2012. “We’ve got a great superintendent,” said Smith. “I have a lot of respect for him. Everything he’s told me has been above board, and I think he’s leading us in the right direction.”
Smith takes his duties as a school district trustee to heart. “You’re dealing with kids and money. Those are important issues,” he said. “… We have a fiduciary responsibility to oversee how money is spent throughout the district and to direct Mr. Stiles in his duties. … The board and the superintendent sometimes have to take chances on things and think outside the box to make positive change, whether it’s realigning campuses or adding on to a school. … It’s rewarding to see something achieved (that we’ve been working toward) and have the district or a child succeed.”
———
More about Eric Smith
• He was a standout athlete in high school and selected as a walk-on to the UNT football team.
• His golf handicap is “a four or five.”
• He is an outdoorsman, having hunted nilgai (a kind of antelope) on the King Ranch and landed a black marlin in Panama that weighed over 500 pounds.