Presentation Date: October 22, 2009
Staff Sergeant Robert L. Smith US Army
Robert L. Smith was born in San Diego, California in 1924, graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School in 1942, and inducted into the United States Army in 1943. He was trained as a surgical technician before being shipped to Normandy, France in July, 1944. He served as a company aid man with the 28th Infantry Division from July 16th until wounded in Wallendorf, Germany in September. Returning to combat, just before the Battle of the Ardennes in December, 1944, he was promoted from private to staff sergeant. His military decorations include The Purple Heart, The Bronze Star, five Battle Stars for the European Theater of operations, Combat Medical Badge, and the Good Conduct Medal.
Robert L. Smith was born in San Diego, California in 1924, graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School in 1942, and inducted into the United States Army in 1943. He was trained as a surgical technician before being shipped to Normandy, France in July, 1944. He served as a company aid man with the 28th Infantry Division from July 16th until wounded in Wallendorf, Germany in September. Returning to combat, just before the Battle of the Ardennes in December, 1944, he was promoted from private to staff sergeant. His military decorations include The Purple Heart, The Bronze Star, five Battle Stars for the European Theater of operations, Combat Medical Badge, and the Good Conduct Medal.
He returned to college under the GI Bill of Rights and received his BA and MA degrees in sociology from the Universities of California Santa Barbara, and Berkeley. His fifty year professional career was dedicated to the administration and reform of juvenile and criminal justice at the local, state, and federal levels of government. He held positions of Chief of Planning, Assistant Chief of Research, and Deputy Director with the California Youth Authority, and Assistant Director with the National Institute of Corrections before his second retirement in 1982. Special awards include a Fulbright Scholarship to Britain in 1961, a Winston Churchill Fellowship Grant to England in 1969, selection as a Visiting Expert for the United Nations Asian Far Eastern Institute in Fuchu, Japan, in 1971, and Leader for six professional visits of Criminal Justice Experts to China from 1979 – 1990, and one to the Soviet Union in 1989. He retired for a third time in 2000 to devote time to his new found interest,”story telling,” which resulted in “Medic!”, The Carnival of Animals, Time Out, Never Waste the Flowers, and his current project, Desires of the Heart: variations on the theme of love.
Robert and Fran Williams Smiths married in 1950, and made their home in Berkeley, California in 1953, where they continue to live.