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.