Smith, Bruce Roland 1918-2005

SMITH, SIRES, PORT, STRAWN, CONWAY, BONNIEWELL

Posted By: Bruce Atkinson (email)
Date: 11/22/2007 at 14:01:11

Bruce R. Smith, 87, of Miltona, Minn., formerly of Sioux City, died Monday, Aug. 1, 2005, at the Douglas County Hospital in Alexandria, Minn.

Services will be 10:30 a.m. Friday at Plymouth Presbyterian Church, 16119 Hickory Avenue, rural Le Mars, Iowa. Burial will be in Plymouth Presbyterian Cemetery, with military rites conducted by the American Legion Wasmer Post 241 of Le Mars. Visitation with the family present will be 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. today at Carlsen Funeral Home in Le Mars.

Bruce Roland Smith was born April 4, 1918, in Sioux City, the son of the now departed George Frank Smith and Mary Doyle (Sires) Smith. He attended Central High School in Sioux City and the refrigeration mechanics school in Chicago, Ill., prior to the outbreak of World War II.

He was united in marriage to Evelyn Mabel Port on Dec. 21, 1940, in Pender, Neb. Four children were born to the couple and raised in Sioux City.

He entered the U.S. Army in 1943. He served as a refrigeration mechanic after first attending quartermaster school in Bloomington, Ill. He was then stationed with the 281st Quartermaster Detachment in Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines and East Indies. He did his duty in combat over all types of terrain and tropical weather conditions. And for that service, he was awarded the Philippine Liberation Ribbon and the Bronze Star Medal. He was honorably discharged as a technical sergeant 4 in 1945.

In 1976, while working as a stationary engineer for Gates Rubber Company in Sioux City, the couple purchased a small resort on Lake Irene near Miltona, Minn. and renamed it Smitty's Hur-E-Bac Resort. The once struggling operation soon turned into a bustling enterprise of families, fishermen and children at play in the lake's crystal clear waters. Smitty's soon became the Smith home.

His skills with refrigeration, small engine, plumbing and the like served him well making the resort business a natural fit. But it was the couple's warm hospitality, good humor, hot coffee and some good crappie and bluegill fishing that drew repeat customers from as far away as Indiana and Ohio. The couple sold the resort a decade later and thereafter kept their home nearby in a comfortable cottage at the water's edge.

Survivors include a daughter and her husband, Julia and Robert Strawn of Manhattan, Kan.; three sons and their wives, Roger and Barbara Smith of Richmond, Va., Pat and Helen Smith of Cerritos, Calif., and Richard and Mary Smith of San Ramon, Calif.; 13 grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and many friends in Iowa and at the lakes.

He was preceded in death by his parents; his wife, Evelyn in 1997; and two sisters, Bernice Conway and Irene Bonniewell.
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Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, Woodbury County, Iowa) of 04 August 2005.