Reverend Maynard Dwight Smith

1921 - 2021

Reverend Maynard Dwight Smith
On Saturday, December 12, 2020, Dr. Maynard Dwight Smith was called to the Lord at the age of 99. Maynard Smith was born February 22, 1921, on a small farm with no running water nor electricity, near Milo, Iowa. He and his parents and his two older sisters lived the regimented life of a dairy farm—twice a day, every day, milking the cows by hand. A bank failure lost the families savings. An-other bank failure put the family farm at risk. Maynard's mother died when he was fifteen.
Within days of his graduation from high school, Maynard found work in the wheat fields of Kansas, and from there followed the wheat harvest to the Canadian border, working and traveling by riding boxcars with other men of that Depression era, who found with him, that this work, though hard and low paying, was at least employment. Harvesting that summer, and in subsequent summers, helped make Maynard's college education possible.
Four months after Pearl Harbor, Maynard enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, and upon graduation from Central College, Pella, Iowa in 1943, he was called up for officers training and active duty. His overseas service included the Okinawa campaign in the Second Marine Air Wing.
After the war, Maynard returned to Iowa where he met Betty Luella Vander Wal. He always remembered their meeting; she was bobbing for apples at a church social and in her determination to get an apple had completely soaked her head. They were married in May of 1947 and shared their life together for 69 years.
When Maynard returned home from the Marine Corps he pursued his call to the ministry and enrolled in McCormick Theological Seminary, from which he received his Bachelor of Divinity Degree in 1950. He would later receive his Doctoral degree from this institution.
Maynard served four churches over the next thirty-six years, his first was Douglas Avenue Presbyterian Church in Des Moines, Iowa. During this period, he and his wife Betty had two boys, Todd and Tim.
Consistent with his belief that one's faith should lead to action on behalf of social justice, Maynard moved his family to Detroit in 1958 where he would become the pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, the second Presbyterian church in the city to become racially integrated; it was a church that had just previously hosted The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. in one of the early speaking tours of the great civil rights leader.
Maynard worked tirelessly to advance the civil rights movement. He marched in the Detroit Walk to Freedom, where Martin Luther King first spoke of having a dream that his children would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. He participated in bringing the famed black poet, Langston Hughes to speak in Detroit where Mr. Hughes was received with great fanfare. As the Chairman of the Presbytery's Social Education and Action Committee he pressed the member churches to take the then controversial stance of welcoming to one's neighborhood any new neighbors of a different race, and as Chairman of Highland Park's Human Relation Council, he exposed to federal authorities the racial bias in the sale of homes in the Federal Urban Renewal Program. In 1965, he had to flee from the Klan while driving supplies to civil rights workers aiding voter registration among blacks in Hattiesburg, Mississippi; it was the year that a Detroit acquaintance of Maynard, Viola Liuzzo, was murdered by the Klan while driving civil rights activists in that state.
While in Detroit, Maynard attended graduate school at Wayne State University and received a Master of Arts in English Literature. Later, in 1966 and 1967, Maynard attended San Fransisco Theological Seminary and obtained a Master in Theology degree.
Maynard then became the pastor of his third church, Deerhurst Presbyterian Church, Kenmore, New York; here, he became more involved in the efforts to end the Vietnam War, traveling to Washington, D.C., talking with legislators, speaking against the war and demonstrating to end it. He was also on the Board of Directors of the Western New York Chapter of the ACLU; during this time one of the is-sues he pressed for was the right of students to protest the war.
In 1971, Maynard found a new home as pastor at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas. Here, he worked closely with Ernesto Cortes, a well-known community organizer working for public discourse and political accountability, and helped form an organization known as the TMO, The Metropolitan Organization. Twenty-five churches formed TMO and St. John's was one of them. Maynard served TMO as its clergy vice-president for ten years.
After retirement Maynard taught courses in American Literature and World Religions at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Also, for a time, he was Parish Associate with First Presbyterian Church, Carson City, and filled in at The First Presbyterian Church, Virginia City, Nevada.
Recently, Maynard served The Presbyterian Church of the Roses, Santa Rosa, California, as their Interim Pastor and for a few months as their Moderator.
Maynard is survived by two sons, Todd (Missy) Smith and Tim (Ginny) Crossleysmith; two grandchildren, Matthew (Yu-Hee) Smith and Brooke Smith; and two great-grandchildren, Benjamin and Daniel Smith.