william cleveland smitherman

William C. Smitherman was no ordinary man by most accounts – rising from being a teenage soda jerk to the top crime fighter in Arizona. So when he died, his wife didn’t bother with the traditional obituary.

Instead, Joanne McBride designed her own ad, a simple announcement of a memorial with a photo of a grinning Mr. Smitherman opening his arms wide. It was better than reducing her husband to “a set of dates, facts and a list of family members,” she said.

“That would have minimized who he was,” said McBride, who was married to Mr. Smitherman for 20 years. “He was bigger than life. If you look at the picture, you will see HIM. That’s why I chose that picture.”

Mr. Smitherman, 71, died April 14 after a long struggle with lung cancer. A memorial service is set for tomorrow at 11 a.m. at St. Michael & All Angels Church, 602 N. Wilmot Road, where Mr. Smitherman worshipped for years.

Mr. Smitherman was born Jan. 22, 1932, in Calvert, Texas, which in the 1860s flourished with the cotton trade but by Dust Bowl days was a town where people eked out a living.

“He was a soda jerk when he was a sophomore in high school,” McBride said. “That’s how he supported himself. He got room and board and if there was any money left over, he sent it to his mom.

“It was a hard-scrabble Texas area and that he could come out of that with such a sense humor, such a sense of promise, is amazing,” she said. “He had the world by its tail. Astounding, isn’t it?”

Mr. Smitherman and a buddy lied about their age to join the National Guard, just so they could get out of town one weekend a month. In 1952, Mr. Smitherman enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and became a pilot stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

After his military discharge, he attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He finished a law degree there in 1961. That year, he joined a law firm in Bisbee, where he met Jim Whitney, who was with the Cochise County Attorney’s Office.

The two not only knew each other professionally, but remained friends for the rest of Mr. Smitherman’s life.

“He was a very decent guy,” said Whitney, who lives in Tucson. “He thought a lot of his friends. He was always ready to help and support you in any way he could.”

At the end of the 1960s, when the mines closed and sapped Bisbee’s economy, Mr. Smitherman moved to Tucson. He became trust officer for the Southern Arizona Bank & Trust Co. and chief assistant U.S. attorney for Arizona.

In three years’ time, he was the U.S. attorney for Arizona. His influence is felt today in the justice system. He had numerous protégés, including Jerry Frank, now a deputy U.S. attorney in Tucson.

“He was one of a kind,” said Frank, whom Smitherman hired as a law clerk in 1971. “There was no mistaking where Bill Smitherman stood. He was sort of an old-fashioned, law-and-order kind of guy.”

During his tenure, Mr. Smitherman ordered searches of former mob boss Joseph Bonanno Sr.’s trash, a story he loved to relate. But he didn’t abuse his power, his wife said.

“Bill wore that power well,” McBride said. “He did not misuse it. That is remarkable because it’s very easy to overstep the bounds of power.”

Mr. Smitherman left the U.S. attorney’s post in 1977. President Carter replaced him with a Democratic candidate. But he wasn’t finished with politics.

“He loved politics,” Whitney said. “Politics was his lifeblood. As far as his ambition to be senator or governor, I don’t think it ran in that direction. One reason was that he didn’t want to move to Phoenix. I don’t think he was crazy about Phoenix.”

In the late 1970s, he headed the state Legislature’s organized crime task force, created after the murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.

In the task force’s 18 months, murder and terrorism inside prison walls was brought to light, the state’s first computerized record of names and businesses behind the biggest frauds in Arizona history was created and laws on child pornography and prostitution were strengthened.

In the 1980s, Mr. Smitherman defended Cochise County when a Miracle Valley church sued over a 1982 confrontation between congregants and law officers that left two church members dead. The suit was settled out of court.

In retirement, Mr. Smitherman enjoyed traveling, antique collecting, browsing flea markets and gardening.

“What surprised me,” McBride said, “was how many men have called and said that they felt as close to Bill as they felt to their father or brother. He really cared for people.

“He was a handsome fellow and he was kind. He was a Southern gentleman. He was a man’s man.”

“Abe Lincoln had a saying that people are as happy as they decide to be. Bill had that on his desk.”

Mr. Smitherman had at least two children, Stephen L. Smitherman and Paul E. Smitherman. A list of survivors was unavailable.