Dorothy Bliss Smith was born in 1912 in a farm house near Riverton, to Kimber Smith and Rose Cowles.

Dorothy was the 3rd child out of 6.

She graduated from Hamburg High School in 1932.

She moved out to Pasadena, California in the 1930s and married a man from South Dakota named Oliver Smith.

They continued to live in California through World War II and helped the war effort by working in a factory making fuses.

In 1945, they welcomed a son and moved back to Geddes, South Dakota to farm. Dorothy died in 1999 after complications from pneumonia and is buried in Geddes, South Dakota.