Hubert L. Smith
Died December 16, 1991
Hubert Lipscomb Smith was born December 20, 1942 in Amarillo, Texas. He began his college education at Rice University and transferred to Yale in 1963. At Yale, Hubert majored in political science and was a member of Branford College. After Yale he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Columbia from 1965 to 1967 and associate Peace Corps director in Brazil from 1968-1971. During this period, Hubert married Judy Pelham, a Smith graduate. Returning to the United States, he worked for a year for the state of Ohio’s Office of Appalachia, using federal funds to promote development in Appalachia. Hubert then obtained advanced degrees from both the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and from Boston University, focusing on labor economics, especially youth unemployment and rural economic development. He served as a consultant to the Office of Economic Opportunity and to Medicaid. In the early 1980s, he spent a year at the Lyndon B. Johnson School at the University of Texas and another year as a consultant for the Manpower Demonstration Research Group which studied the Austin labor market. “ Hubert’s heart was with the poor,” his classmate and longtime friend Bob Baker says. “ That’s where his passion was.”
In our 1990 class book, Hubert reported that he had adopted three children and was “trying to launch a career as a novelist.” He didn’t have time. Hubert died on December 16, 1991.
Robert Baker remembers:
Hubert came to Yale as a junior after spending two years as a scholarship football player at Rice. He disappointed John Pont when he told the coach he had transferred to Yale to be a student and not a football player. Hubert was a good student, and he was concerned with the plight of the less fortunate. After Yale, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil, and then stayed on for several more years in the administration of the Peace Corps program in Brazil. He then worked for me at the State of Ohio as director of our program to aid Appalachia. A Masters degree from Harvard and affiliation with the University of Texas followed. He died much too early.
Sumner Macomber remembers:
It’s hard to lose half your roommates so early, but I will always remember them as youthful and vigorous, and for good times and friendship. Here’s to Forrest Armstrong, Jairl Dowell, Don Finkel, and Hubert Smith; and to a classmate who became a good friend during law school, Bruce Babcock.