Editor’s note: This is the second installation of a profile of Centralia’s Rev. Alta Smith by Chronicle columnist Julie McDonald. To read the first installment, visit https://tinyurl.com/bde7ahju.
In last week’s column, I shared stories from the early life of Centralia's Rev. Alta Smith and how she met and married her husband, Willis “Snoopy” Smith.
After living in Japan, Oregon, and then California, Snoop and Alta Smith moved to North Bend, Indiana, where Snoop attended school at Notre Dame. During the summers, they traveled and visited as many state capitals as possible. They’ve made it to every capital except the one in Little Rock, Arkansas, and eight of the 10 Canadian provinces.
After two years in Indiana, the family moved to Germany, where they lived off the Spangdahlem Air Base near Wittenberg.
“Every weekend, we did what’s called a volksmarch,” Alta said, referring to noncompetitive walks along hikes and trails for fitness. “Every little town sponsored one, and then you got a big medal at the end. So the four of us all went every weekend. That was just an amazing experience to be out walking in the woods every weekend. That’s the best way to find out about places, walking through them.”
They thrived on their wonderful unity as a family.
“We didn’t have television in Germany,” she said. “We played games, and we had an upright piano, and Snoop would play it.”
They hosted New Year’s Eve parties because their home was on a hill offering a great view from their balcony of fireworks from the town below. They melted lead and dropped it into a glass of cold water, and whatever shape it formed offered predictions for their upcoming year. In addition to picking grapes at a vineyard and enjoying pig roasts with neighbors, they sampled wines of the region.
“I learned to really enjoy wine in Germany,” Alta said. “They had this wonderful wine called Eiswein. It’s the last picking of the year, and it’s always after it’s frosted, so the flavor goes deeper. It’s very expensive.” She bought her husband an expensive bottle but never told him how much she spent. When a friend from Notre Dame visited, Snoop gave him that bottle of Eiswein.
The airlines offered cheaper fares for those who stayed for six weeks in Germany, which encouraged visitors. Alta and a friend from California drove their kids — five altogether — in the car to tour around Germany. They stopped at a station for ethyl gasoline, but they didn’t have any. They kept traveling, with Alta as navigator, but wound up back at the same station two more times.
After three years in Germany, the Smiths returned to the States, where Snoop was stationed in Missouri, working under a boss who called himself Atilla the Hun.
“He was not a nice man at all,” Alta said. “We bought a house that made us house-poor. We overstretched what we thought we could do, so I went to work at McDonald’s.”
They lived in nearby Bellville, Illinois, and Alta was probably 40 when she started working at the fast-foot restaurant, supervised by a 25-year-old manager who didn’t treat young women well. He hovered over them, and one young woman quit on the spot.
“That’s on you,” Alta told him. “I think he was afraid of me.”
One time at a meeting in the Officers Wives Club, someone asked where she worked.
“McDonald’s,” she replied.
“Oh, McDonnell Douglas? What are you doing there?”
“No, I’m flipping hamburgers.”
Snoop returned home one day and asked how she’d like to go back and see mountains and trees rather than the flat landscape of Missouri. That’s when they began talking about him retiring from the military, which he did after serving 21 years.
They returned to Vancouver, Washington, found an apartment, and discussed the future. Snoop hired on with the city of Vancouver. While he worked, Alta pursued her master’s degree in special education at Portland State University. After graduating in 1980, she found a teaching job in the Evergreen School District, working with junior high students who had behavioral problems.
“I was just thrown in with the wolves,” she said. “They were hard, and I only taught in that class for six months. I’ve looked at pictures of myself when Stacy graduated from high school and realized I probably lost 30 or 40 pounds in that absolute stress. I remember driving to work one morning and thinking, ‘Oh, if the ground would just open up …’”
The next few years, she taught developmentally delayed students in special ed, which offered more rewarding moments.
One day, she had to fill in as a substitute for the band teacher, even though she had never played an instrument. She told administrators afterward she’d teach anything but band.
But an unfulfilled yearning remained in her heart. As a child, while sitting in church one day, Alta felt God calling her to preach. She spoke to their pastor, who said, “Honey, women don’t do that, but if God wants you, God won’t let you go.”
In her mid-20s, she experienced a similar call and spoke to the pastor, who once again told her women can’t preach but repeated that if God wants you, He won’t let you go.
During her third year of teaching in Vancouver, she again experienced a call to preach, even though Snoop was close to retirement age.
“We had begun planning for retirement, all the trips we were going to take and all of that,” she said. “So I was really nervous to say, ‘Honey, this is what I think God wants me to do.’”
During a drive, she told him, “I think God wants me to go into the ministry.” He responded, “Well, if that’s what God wants, that’s what we have to do.”
When she shared her plans with teachers over coffee one day, a man asked her for clarification. When she said she planned to attend seminary to be a minister, she recalled, “He looked at me and he said, ‘That’s blasphemy.’ He got up, walked out of the room and didn’t talk to me again ever.”
She applied for Iliff School of Theology and, upon receiving her acceptance and a scholarship, moved with Snoop to Denver. Their girls were both adults by then.
“The time for us together was so rich, and Iliff had a policy that spouses could audit classes, so Snoop audited,” she said. “When I graduated with 140 hours, he had 136 hours of auditing.”
She never would have passed Hebrew without him, she said. They quizzed each other while walking near their apartment.
“He was just so generous with his love for me,” she said.
After three years, she graduated with a Master of Divinity in 1993, but she said it’s a long process to gain approval for ministry in the United Methodist Church. “I think it’s very wise, because being a minister is a kind of career where people trust you with a lot. They come and they share their lives with you. And if you’re a person who manipulates people, it’s very dangerous.”
She became a probationary pastor and then gained acceptance as an elder. She preached six years at Bonney Lake, Washington, and six years at Centralia United Methodist Church.
Did she face discrimination as a female pastor?
“You know, I stood on the shoulders of several women who went ahead of me,” she said. “It’s the best job I ever had. Because people trust you. You know them from the time the baby’s born until the marriage, the death. You’re part of that whole circle of living. It’s an incredible gift.”
She loved preaching and teaching Christ’s word, until her voice started going. She volunteered as a chaplain called to fires, a Sunday school teacher, and a Community Mediation Center member. She served 13 years on the United Way of Lewis County board of directors.
After she retired, she filled in as interim pastor at churches in Rochester, Morton and Chehalis.
Then she and Snoop started traveling. They love baseball and wanted to visit every Major League baseball stadium in the United States. Fenway Park in Boston is her favorite. They drove to stadiums, watched a game and visited sites along the way. They traveled to 55 countries, stopping on every continent except for Antarctica. They’ve taken cruises, too.
And they’ve enjoyed their four grandchildren — Chris, Lydia, Gracie, and Samantha.
“I have had such an incredible life,” Alta said. “I’ve just been so blessed in so many ways.”
She described marriage as having peaks and valleys, noting that both partners must stay through the valleys and hold onto their love for one another “because it’s awful easy during the valleys to let it all go away.”
“Recently, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I was married before the time when women could have their own checking account,” Alta said. “They couldn’t take money out of the bank. They couldn’t get birth control. They had to go to the doctor, and their husbands needed to sign off. The men were controlling everything. I will say, it’s an ongoing fight.”
Six years ago, Alta was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, but she maintains her good humor.
“When I carry water, I tend to baptize the floor,” she said. “My only real problem is my voice and the tremors.”
When I noted she seems to focus on positives rather than negatives, she said, “I don’t know how you really live with any peace if you don’t.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
