Connected
My roots trace back to the Great Migration, when my parents left the South in the 1930s and 1940s, seeking opportunity and freedom from the grip of Jim Crow laws. Raised in large, tight-knit families, they carried a deep resilience and the art of getting along with everyone.
That spirit lives on in me. Like my mother and grandmother before me, I am self-assured, warm, endlessly optimistic, and always up for a good laugh. My mother, Beatrice, had a signature mix of charm and wit. "If you are at a dinner party and feeling nervous," she would say, "just walk up to the bowl of shrimp and own it.”
Beatrice always found the good in people. Once, after someone rudely cut my father off in traffic, she simply said, "Now, now, Smitty, you do not know what kind of day he has had." Her grace and generosity are stitched into the fabric of my everyday life.