Ruth Smith pulled out a piece of notebook paper with handwritten notes.
“I jotted a few things down this morning over coffee,” said Smith, the president and CEO of the Human Development Corporation of Metropolitan St. Louis (HDC) since 1994.
It was a list of dates, some even including time of day, when crucial moments occurred in the 46-year history of HDC, an agency that offers social service programs.
Highlighted in yellow was the date September 30, 1981.
On that day, President Ronald Reagan called former CEO Harold Antoine at “five minutes till five” to tell him that the White House would be dismantling the Community Service Agency, the federal agency where HDC received the core of its funding.
“I’ll never forget that day,” she said.
In a minute, the agency went from 800 employees to five. Smith, the agency’s comptroller, was one of the five.
Eventually, HDC hired most of those people back when Reagan set up the Community Service Block grant, the principal source of the agency’s current funding.
Smith has more than 40 years of such memories. She started at HDC on October 9, 1967 as a junior accountant. Soon after Smith announced her retirement on April 29, 2011, the national non-profit Community Action Partnership recognized her as a pioneer in the “War on Poverty.” Smith said it was one of her proudest moments.
“‘Pioneer’ is a semi-official designation/recognition of someone who has been involved and successful in our Community Action Movement for decades,” said Don Mathis, president and CEO of the partnership.
“It’s not a term of endearment that we throw around loosely. Rather, a pioneer is someone who started in the early years of the War on Poverty (during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration in the mid-1960s).”
Community collaborator
Without the HDC in St. Louis, Smith suspects that 116,000 people would be living in Tent City. Under her helm, the agency has doubled the number of people served. And she has pushed the agency to get out in the community and partner with other agencies.
“What she has been able to do – more than most people in that position – is to collaborate with other organizations, including the Gateway Classic, Matthews-Dickey Boys’ & Girls’ Club, and others,” said Former Fire Chief Sherman George, who collaborated with Smith on many efforts.
“She wants to get away and rest, but she will be sorely missed.”
Before she arrived at the agency, however, poverty was not a familiar part of her life.
“I wasn’t brought up with a silver spoon, but I almost didn’t know what poverty was,” she said.
Smith’s parents were an interracial couple in New York when that was not looked upon favorably, she said. She grew up in Westchester County, New York, where she attended both public and private schools.
Through her brother, she met a “St. Louis man” and moved here in 1963. From there, Smith worked at Gateway Bank, where HDC’s former CEO, the late Judge Clyde Cahill, served as the bank’s attorney.
Many people find it surprising, she said, that she rose to the ranks of local leadership without growing up in St. Louis. Particularly within the African-American community, she said, that’s not easy to do.
In 1981, she became the first and only female comptroller of HDC, then a $50-million agency with 5,000 employees. In 1994, she became its first female CEO. It is now an $18 million agency with 75 employees.
Departure of a Delta
On September 30, 2011 – 30 years after the day President Reagan put the agency into a complete panic in her first year as comptroller – Smith will leave her office.
For six months after she leaves, she will serve as a consultant to see current projects through and to assist the next CEO, said Charles Barge, chairman of HDC’s Board of Directors.
She has received many awards and recognitions, including presentation of a “star” in the St. Louis Gateway Classic Sports Foundation Walk of Fame, Woman of Achievement in 2007 and the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus’ Gwen Giles award.
She will be given the St. Louis American Foundation’s 2011 Non-Profit Executive of the Year award at the Salute to Excellence in Business in November.
“Ruth Smith has been a stalwart community service champion for many decades,” said state Senator Robin Wright-Jones of the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus. “She has successfully guided HDC through political, legislative and economic turmoil, leaving a strong legacy for its next director.”
On her jacket, Smith wore a sparkling elephant pin. And just about everywhere you look in her office, you will find an elephant statue or symbol. She’s a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., which claims the elephant as its mascot.
Some time back, the Deltas gave her an appropriate statue that sits on her office shelf. It’s a beaded bird with its head turned backwards taking an egg off its back. In Ghana, it’s called a sankofa representing the idea, “Go back and retrieve.”
For her, it evokes a proverb her mother engrained in her.
“My mother said, ‘No matter where you are in life, you should always look back and pull someone along with you,'” Smith said. “I’m following what my mother taught me as a child. It has been my mission in life. My biggest achievement is thinking of all the people that I’ve helped to change their lives.”
