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The Dr. James W. Smith and Barbara A. Smith Endowed Scholarship
Alumnus James W. Smith, M.D. ’53, who established his career at a drug and alcohol addiction treatment facility in Seattle, was well loved. You can see it in the testimonials made by his colleagues at Schick Shadel Hospital a short time after he died in 2007.
“He cared for each individual as if they were the only person he was treating.”
“In a world short on role models, Dr. James Smith best represents the quiet compassion, modest excellence and selfless dedication to others that I will strive to have some day.”
“If there is an ‘addiction heaven,” everyone there is in better hands now.”
Smith, who worked for Schick Shadel for nearly 50 years, left a legacy that goes far beyond the hospital. In perfecting aversion therapy techniques and in helping doctors recognize alcoholism and drug addiction as diseases, his work touched every patient at Schick Shadel and many, many people throughout the world.
He and his family also have left another legacy, this one to UW Medicine: the Dr. James W. Smith and Barbara A. Smith Endowed Scholarship.
Smith never had a scholarship, says his wife, Barbara, but he felt strongly about medical education and training. Smith also felt that doctors should be given the chance to follow their calling, just as he did.
After graduating from the School of Medicine and serving as a naval medical officer with the U.S. Marine Corps, Smith entered private practice: making house calls, setting bones, delivering babies. He began work at Schick Shadel as a favor — he was just filling in temporarily — but he found he enjoyed the work, and he left private practice to become the hospital’s chief of staff. Later, he became the hospital’s medical director.
In the 1960s, when alcoholism was viewed as a failure of character rather than a disease, this career change was a leap of faith. It surprised people that he’d leave a successful practice, says Lee Smith, one of his daughters. “He probably surprised himself,” she says. Her brother, Walter, remembers that his dad used to quote from “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost — a comment on Dr. Smith’s choice in specializing in addiction medicine.
Despite his commitment to his field, Smith still left time for other pursuits. He enjoyed spending time with his wife and children, especially summers and weekends at the family farm in Enumclaw, Wash. He loved sports, including Husky football. He and Barbara enjoyed music and theatre; he loved to read.
Smith also had a great affection for the School of Medicine, and although he and Barbara had given to the Class of ’53 Endowed Scholarship, Smith wanted to do more — to make sure that students could follow their calling, without getting mired in medical-school debt.
In the hospital, says Barbara Smith, when Dr. Smith was being treated for leukemia, the couple came up with a plan. “We decided we’d do our endowed scholarship,” she says.
Not long afterward, the Smith children decided to join them.
“The kids just wanted to get involved, too, as a way to honor him,” says Lee Smith. And so Lee and her partner, Laura Fife, M.D., Walt and his wife, Denise, and daughter Lynn Smith and her husband, Philip L. Knowles, Ph.D., decided to contribute to the fund, taking advantage of matching programs offered by the University of Washington.
What’s most important about giving to the scholarship, says Lynn Smith, is honoring her father’s commitment to education. “We know it’s important to my dad,” she says.
2008
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