LeGrand Benjamin Smith

LeGrand Benjamin Smith died peacefully in his sleep on June 19, 2025, one month and one day after the passing of his beloved wife, Jayne.
June 20 would have been Jayne and LeGrand’s 76th wedding anniversary. His granddaughter Maia remembers LeGrand as “a man of immense personality, kindness, and eloquence.” He was “an embodiment of the gentleman scholar, a lover of culture and knowledge. His interests were vast and varied. He enjoyed opera, playing the recorder and being a patron of local artists.” His “life was a testament to the power of love, curiosity, adventure, and service.”

LeGrand was born in Iquique, Chile on July 30, 1926, the oldest son of Methodist missionaries LeGrand Barnum Smith and Mildred Failey Smith. He had two siblings, George and Florence. When LeGrand was quite young, his parents were called to serve in Bolivia and he grew up there, mostly in Cochabamba. He went to high school at Ward Methodist High School in Buenos Aires and then pursued undergraduate studies at Vanderbilt University. While at Vanderbilt, LeGrand met and married Jayne Shouse Smith. Soon thereafter, they moved to Evanston, Illinois where LeGrand trained for the ministry and the mission field at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.

After he finished his studies, LeGrand and Jayne started forty-five years of service and mission work that took them to Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina with a short stint in Española, New Mexico. During their ministry, LeGrand pastored many churches, taught in the seminary in Montero, prepared didactic materials, and filled in as principal of the American Institute in La Paz when it was needed. They spent most of their retirement years in Asheville, NC, at Brooks-Howell Home where they found a strong community of former missionaries. In October of 2023, they moved to Newport News, VA, to live close to their second son, Elton.

LeGrand and Jayne had four children, all of whom were born in Bolivia. LeGrand Benjamin and Elton were born in Sucre and Bruce and Carol were born in La Paz. They also had 10 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. In addition, they managed to adopt and be adopted by close families that they encountered on their life’s journey. These deep relations made them effective parents and grandparents to many beyond their own progeny.

When family members were asked for vivid memories of LeGrand, all agreed with Elton’s wife Suzi that “it’s difficult to pick one memory of such a multi-gifted man.” LeGrand was enthusiastic about sharing his interests with anyone who would listen. Carol’s husband Ben has a memory, “repeated many times” of getting a package from LeGrand. “It is a book, of course, one that he has read and thinks I should, and there is no telling what it will be about. He has such a wide and vigorous mind, with so many keen interests: chess, music, science, theology, art, history. So I open the parcel with gratitude and, frankly, with a little trepidation. Where are we off to this time? I am still finding it hard to keep up with him.”

One of LeGrand’s lifelong passions was music: he filled Saturday afternoons listening to classical records in the library as an undergraduate and continued streaming performances from the NY Metropolitan Opera till the very end. Elton’s son Adrian notes that “he was a talented singer and musician. Over the years, he would arrange duets, trios, and quartets for us to play using his wide collection of recorders. I remember joining grandpa for a musical trio. I hadn’t practiced as much as I should have and missed a coda which Grandpa had noticed immediately. He continued playing his recorder following his own music sheet while somehow also summoning a third hand to show me where I was supposed to be playing on my own sheet.” At his final residence, he began singing blessings before the meal in their dining hall. Adrian remembers that “for grandpa’s 97th Christmas, we joined him for lunch in the Charter dining hall. After some other families arrived, Grandpa sang a blessing for all attending that filled the room. After he had finished, but before we could eat, another family arrived late. Since they had missed the first round, we received an encore as boisterous as the first.”

LeGrand’s enthusiasm could also cause family members to roll their eyes. Bruce’s daughter Rebekah fondly remembers a special visit from her grandparents when she was living in California, as “it was the first time I really had one-on-one time with them as an adult.” She remembers being dragged all over the Bay Area, visiting “any and all of the museums, especially the art museums. Now, as I enjoy museums, I am not particularly fond of art museums, but of course I didn’t mention this to Grandpa, and we spent all our time in them (much to my dismay!).” But as we all know “Grandpa likes what he likes and therefore assumes everyone else must also be interested in the same things – regardless of whether we are bored to tears!” When Carol was a little girl, she would warn visitors: “Don’t ask him about his fossils unless you want to hear about it for hours and hours.” But Rebekah concludes: “Having Grandpa in my life forced me to learn things, see things and do things that I would normally never have done, and I love that about him.”

LeGrand was a very serious amateur paleontologist. Largely self-taught, he became an expert on Devonian trilobites of Bolivia. LeGrand had a hand in the discovery of six new species. The most important fossil he discovered was Legrandella Lombardii Eldridge, a relative of the modern horseshoe crab, which is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Natural History in New York. For this work, LeGrand was awarded the Strimple Award by The Paleontological Society, which recognizes outstanding achievement by amateurs. Carol’s daughter Glynis remembers his interest and excitement from “the small trilobites he would send me on my birthday or drop off when he visited.” She appreciated that he could always tell her things about them, increasing her own interest in learning about fossils. “I remember finding my own first fossil on a rock on the way home from school and showing it to him on his next visit to help identify. (It was a crinoid.) It made paleontology seem like something anyone could do.”

It was easy to think of LeGrand as more a scholar than an athlete, but Bruce’s son Sean vividly remembers a family gathering where “grandpa picked up a ping pong paddle. Played a couple games and showed me a thing or two!” Son-in-law Ben remembers signing on for a fossil-hunting expedition on the Bolivian Altiplano, a couple of hours from La Paz. “There I am, still in my twenties; he is over sixty; we are at 13,000 feet above sea level; and he is walking the socks off me.” Well up into his 80s and 90s, LeGrand walked all over Asheville, picking up trash from the side of the road. It was typical of his desire to find ways of making the world a better place.

Straddling the worlds of theology and evolution, LeGrand had an expansive view of God’s creation. Maia writes that, as devout Christians, LeGrand and his wife Jayne “lived their faith through service, ritual, and community, not judgement. They saw religion as a guiding narrative that shaped their lives of service. I vividly recall a childhood neighbor’s astonishment at the sight of both a Jesus fish and an evolution fish coexisting on the back of their car. Even as a young child, their influence helped me understand the absurdity of twisting one’s mind to accept Creationism as a scientific fact. Their teachings instilled in me the importance of intellectual honesty and embracing truth in all its forms.” Suzi remembered a long conversation about the bible with LeGrand and Jayne, noting that they “helped me grow in my faith and define it differently into a less conservative and more accepting outlook that has changed my life and thinking.” Bruce’s daughter Kristine writes “I am a passionate and very active ally to the LGBTQIA community, specifically, but also the Black community…I’d like to think that my passion for advocacy and allyship was inherited from Grandpa and Grandma.” Rebekah adds that “having grandparents that were so open and welcoming to all is something I will always cherish.”

Elton’s daughter Maia challenges us to “celebrate LeGrand’s life, his love, and his unwavering commitment to knowledge and service… To participate in them, we need only to pick up a book and share it with a friend.”