James Oliver Smith Jr.

At 4 o'clock in the morning, a foot tall red oak tree crashed through the bedroom ceiling of James Oliver Smith, Jr. ('Fudd'), filling the room with jagged, defeated rafters - the great trunk itself stopping short of the bed he had only moments before tottered away from. It was one of fifteen Hurricane Helene hammers that wrecked the property that night. The house, battered but still standing, would become the final project of Jim's life as over the ensuing fifteen months he oversaw its restoration despite the common hobbles of old age. He clawed away the debris of chaos, searching for the routine and familiar. Jim, a lifelong Greenvillian save for his stint as an Army Second Lieutenant, was a man who always preferred routine's quiet certainties. The restoration was successful, for as Jim lay dying recently it was on the floor of his home, not crushed beneath a giant tree, but merely defeated in his dotage by a single stair-step of the house he'd fought to redeem, a fall suffered en route from his TV chair to his nightly ice cream fix. He was, in the end, claimed by the very place he had reclaimed.
He lay only moments before death, surrounded by the devoted efforts of his wife Evelyn and by mementos of his 88-year-old life, reinstated to walls and tabletops: photos of loved ones (his 3 children and 11 grandchildren/great-grandchildren, his sister Annetta); a vintage pictorial church plate of First Presbyterian Church where he was an elder and which his parents Jim Smith and Camilla Foreman Smith attended; iconography of Furman where he earned a business degree while playing varsity tennis; and file folders of memorabilia from the marketing campaigns he spearheaded as chief marketing officer for First Federal Savings & Loan.
Jim's funeral will be at First Presbyterian Church, 200 W. Washington St., Greenville, SC 29601, on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025 with visitation from 10:30 a.m. until 11:15 a.m., followed by a service at 11:30 a.m. Burial will be private. Our state loses a 13th generation South Carolinian, and those who knew Jim lose an approachable everyman with no taste for bravado. He will continue to be missed by many, just as he has been since his abrupt departure on November 29, 2025. To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of James, please visit our floral store.