Frank Hoxie Smith
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Frank Hoxie Smith, 90, died in his sleep on Feb. 10 at the Morning Glory Adult Care Home and Hospice of Midland, Texas. He had been living in Midland with his son, W. Hoxie Smith, and daughter-in-law, Sally Weber Smith.
Born in North Platte, Nebraska, "Hoxie," as he was known to friends and family, was the son of Lucius Skinner Smith Jr. and Georgie Hoxie Smith of Du Quoin, Illinois. He attended school in Du Quoin before moving to Santa Ana, California for high school. While attending the University of Illinois, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and in what he described as a patriotic fervor, he interrupted his education to enter the Army.
Smith was eventually assigned to Company "I" of the 3rd Battalion of the 16th Regiment, in the First Infantry Division ("Big Red One") as a machine gunner under General Omar Bradley. He entered Europe on the second wave of the D-Day crossing and fought in the Hurtgen Forest, The Battle of the Bulge, The Ardennes, The Rhineland, Central Europe and the Harz Mountains for which he was awarded numerous decorations from the U.S., Belgian and French militaries.
When the War ended, he stayed on for the Occupation and served as an Army Correspondent at the Nuremburg Trials. His reportorial coup was to find and interview the widow of Claus von Stauffenberg, leader of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It was also during the Occupation that Smith attended classes at the Sorbonne in Paris and met and married his multilingual translator, Irena Ziegler, a Polish Holocaust survivor.
After the war, Smith worked for his family's newspaper and publishing company, "The Du Quoin Evening Call" in Du Quoin Illinois, and was later married for a second time to Virginia Mae Witt of Syracuse Nebraska. Smith displayed the affability and quick wit for which he was known throughout his life. In 1962, he moved to Arizona and then California for a successful career with The First American Title Insurance Company from which he retired, in 1986, as a Senior Vice President. He eventually married twice more to Loretta Johnson, of Orange County, California, who died soon afterward of asthma complications and then later to the now deceased Katherine Baker, of Palo Alto California, whom he had known in high school.
In retirement, Smith pursued private real estate ventures and followed his beloved St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, who rewarded him with two 21st-century World Series victories. He was an avid reader of non-fiction, biographies and mysteries. He loved animals and would often show up at the family household with a smile on his face and an exotic new friend under his arm. His favorite quotation, from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was "A mind stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." It was a direct reference to his military experience.
Smith was predeceased by his two older siblings, Lucius Skinner Smith II and Mary Elizabeth Otto. He is survived by four children, George David Smith (Hastings on Hudson, N.Y.), son of Irena Ziegler, and Daniel W. Smith (Du Quoin, Ill.), Suzanne Rawlings (Mesa, Ariz.) and W. Hoxie Smith (Midland, Tex.), from his marriage to Virginia Witt and eight grandchildren: David and Giselle Smith of Hastings on Hudson, New York; Shannon and Julia Smith of Edmonds, Washington; Shealea and Steven Rawlings of Mesa, Arizona; Alyssa Smith of Houston, Texas and Lauren Smith of Fort Collins, Colorado.
Funeral services will be held at the First United Presbyterian Church near the traditional family home in Du Quoin, Illinois on a date yet to be announced.