Andy Smith left his Indiana hometown in the middle of his senior year of high school. His guidance counselor pointed out he’d miss prom and graduation. “That’s why I’m leaving!” he told her with his characteristic humor.
At age 17, in 1976, he enlisted in the Navy as an operations specialist, stationed in Pearl Harbor and deployed on a West Pacific cruise through Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Korea, and Australia. His crew’s mission: anti-submarine warfare during the height of the Cold War. On one memorable assignment, they kept a Russian diesel submarine submerged for two full days. When the crew finally surfaced, Smith recalls, “they were not happy.”
He was later stationed in Portland on a reserve destroyer at Swan Island, where he met his wife Carol, fell in love with her and the Pacific Northwest, and never looked back.
Nearly 36 years in the fire service
After the Navy, Smith joined the fire department and stayed for nearly 36 years. What drew him in was simple: he wanted something exciting. What kept him was something deeper.
“Every time I rolled out the door, I knew I was going to be involved in someone’s worst day,” he reflects. The firefighters he most admired were the ones with a genuine servant’s heart, so he worked to become one of them, staying flexible, finding the humor, and looking for ways to help. He also spent years as an academy instructor, deliberately stressing out recruits to find out what they were made of and build the confidence they’d need when it counted.
He credits the bonds forged in the firehouse as something rare. “You will have times where your friends will literally save your life,” he says. “What other jobs have that?”
Smith, a Hockinson resident, retired after a career he clearly gave everything to.
The legacy
What is he most proud of? His family.
Two of his sons are firefighters. A third served in the Navy across multiple deployments and now works as a drone pilot for Airbus. His daughter served in the Coast Guard and went on to found a nonprofit supporting sexual assault survivors across the military branches. Carol spent 42 years caring for veterans at the VA hospital.
“I now have 13 grandchildren,” Smith says, “and am blessed to be able to influence them in their lives.”
That’s the legacy of a life well-lived.
