Don Smiley’s book of poems caps almost 50 years in Ozark County
Photo by Norene Prososki Connie and Don Smiley, on the deck of their lake home in Theodosia, hold Don’s book of poetry, “Silent Our Walk and other Poems.” Although most of the books have been given away as gifts, there are a limited number of copies available for $9 at the Ozark County Times office. The cover of Don Smiley’s book of poetry features a photo of Don and their beloved golden retriever Barley returning home after hunting on their property in Theodosia. The photo was taken by his wife Connie
Don Smiley always had a little compulsion about rhyming. He’d jot down poems about whatever subject was on his mind – forest animals, walking in the woods, his love for his wife Connie and daughter Tava or his passion for the Ozarks.
Through the decades of their married life, Don would leave the poems, scribbled on a scrap of paper, on Connie’s desk in her art studio downstairs in their Theodosia lake home – just a little something to brighten her day.
Connie, an artist, writer and photographer, who formerly worked for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, secretly and carefully filed each poem away throughout the years. Don forgot all about them.
Last year, Connie had the idea to put all the poems together in a book as a surprise Christmas present for him. “I got it pretty much all put together, and then I thought, before I order this, I better get some input from Don, so I blew the surprise and told him about it,” Connie said. “We looked at it, he tweaked a few things, and we sent it off to be printed.”
The book, titled “Silent Our Walk and Other Poems,” has been given away to a long list of friends and acquaintances throughout the year. A few copies are still available and can be purchased at the Ozark County Times office for $9.
Smiley grew up in Kansas City and enjoyed summertime visits at his grandparents’ farm in St. Claire County. Those visits planted a love for the rugged outdoors of the Ozarks. After graduating from the University of Central Missouri, he applied to Officer Candidate School and spent the next six years as a Navy officer.
In 1966, he volunteered for Vietnam. During his wartime service, his left eardrum was blown out, and his left eye was injured. (Forty years later, he had laser surgery that finally fixed the eye problem, and he now wears a high-tech hearing aid that fixes the eardrum problem.) While he was recovering from his injuries in a hospital in DaNang, he thought often of his grandparents, Otis and Pearl Smiley, and the simple life they lived on their little farm tucked away in the Ozarks – the farm where he had spent some summers as a boy.
“I decided if I can get out of here and still function, I’m going to live in a place like that,” he said.
After his discharge in 1969, Smiley earned an MBA at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. When he graduated (at the top of his class), he put the idea of a simple life in the Ozarks on hold and headed out into the corporate world.
He had a successful run of executive-level positions in big corporations, including Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems, a job that came with an office on Wall Street. In the early 1970s, he returned to Kansas City to sell commercial and industrial real estate. On his way home one summer night in 1974, a car broke down in front him, and Smiley was stuck in a three-lane traffic jam. Something clicked, and he decided to move to the Ozarks.
Smiley had done his MBA thesis on Ozark County and he remembered a couple of men he had connected with during his research, L. B. Cook and his son Bill, owners of what is now Theodosia Marina Resort.
“They were good guys to know,” Smiley said.
It wasn’t long before Smiley had a small office in rented space near the Theodosia Marina in what had been part of the old Theodosia Hills development, which had gone bust.
Referring to that MBA thesis he’d written about Ozark County a few years earlier, Smiley said, “I opened a real estate office in a place I’d said wouldn’t grow.”
With $5,000 total in savings and no real estate listings, he incorporated his company, Sierra Ozark, and elected himself president. And with that, his two big dreams were fulfilled. He was president of a corporation, and he was living in the heart of the real Ozarks.
In 2021, Smiley sold Sierra Ozark to H.K. Gaulding. At the end of this year, Smiley’s brokerage license expires, marking 50 years of selling real estate in Ozark County. He said 50 years is a good milestone to end his career, and he doesn’t have any plans of renewing.
His love of Ozark County is evident when you read his poetry and in his conversation. “If people knew what we had down here, we would be overrun,” he said. “There’s no better place to live. Every day when I wake up, I thank God for one more day here.”