University Times

In a newspaper interview this summer, less than two months before he died, former Pitt Provost Rhoten Smith was asked which had been more difficult — piloting B-17 bomber missions over Germany during World War II, or contending with campus radicals as a college president during the late 1960s. (He’d been president of Northern Illinois University before coming to Pitt in 1971.)

“Well, I think I was much less likely to be killed as a college president,” Smith replied.

That quip — with its sly emphasis on the word “think” — was typical of Smith, friends and family members agreed. So was the matter-of-fact way that Smith, in the same interview with the Greeley (Colo.) Tribune, revealed he was dying from a malignant brain tumor. “They’ve done radiation and that wasn’t much help,” Smith said. “They can’t get rid of it, and at my age, there’s not much point in surgery.”

Smith, 82, died Sept. 6, 2003, at Hospice and Palliative Care of Northern Colorado in Greeley, the city where he and his wife Barbara relocated following Smith’s retirement as Pitt provost and senior vice chancellor in 1983.

His son, Tyler Smith of Denver, said his father earlier had been diagnosed with throat cancer, which metastasized to the brain. He described Rhoten Smith as a voracious reader “who had come from very humble beginnings and had quite a life.”

Born in Fort Worth, Tex., Smith studied at Texas Wesleyan University and married before entering flight school at the height of World War II. He and his crew completed 35 missions over Germany from July 1944 to January 1945 — 10 more missions than were flown by the war’s most famous B-17 bomber, “The Memphis Belle.”

“Actually, the idea was fairly simple,” Smith said of bomber missions. “Simple except they were shooting at you. That was a drawback.”

Smith returned from the war to Ottawa, Kan., two days after the birth of his first child, a daughter. He then was sent to P-51 fighter school in preparation for joining the Pacific war, but completed his military service obligation before he could return to aerial combat.

After the war, Smith earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Kansas and a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at those schools before launching his career in academic administration at Temple University, where he was dean of the College of Liberal Arts from 1961 to 1967. Smith was president of Northern Illinois University from 1967 until 1971, when he became Pitt’s senior academic officer.

It was the beginning of a new era in higher education — “the era of financial constraints,” as Smith called it, more difficult by far, in his opinion, than the preceding era of student unrest.

In a 1983 University Times interview, Smith said the main challenge of his career here had been to answer the question, “How do you maintain, and even improve, the hard-won quality of our academic programs in a time when there really aren’t adequate dollars to do that?” It’s a question that continues to challenge Pitt administrators two decades later.

Smith showed no favoritism in dealing with Pitt’s various schools, recalled his friend and colleague, John Bolvin, former dean of the College of General Studies (CGS).

“Rhoten gave as much attention to the professional schools as he did to the arts and sciences, which was very unusual — and still is,” said Bolvin, who held administrative positions at Pitt’s education school and Learning Research and Development Center before becoming CGS dean in 1983. Together with then-Chancellor Wesley Posvar, Smith aggressively championed affirmative action in faculty hiring as well as student recruiting, said Bolvin. The first dean that Smith hired was an African-American: David Epperson of social work.

Smith acknowledged that his administrative style was low-profile. That was largely because, he said, “I’ve not played the role that some chief academic officers play, which is to ask for the moon and then let somebody else decide what’s really possible. I know that pounding the table isn’t going to put any more dollars on that table.”

Smith was the highest-ranking official to take advantage of one of Pitt’s first early retirement incentive plans. Leaving Pitt at age 62, he and his wife, Barbara, moved to Colorado to be closer to their children and grandchildren. But they would maintain contact with Pitt friends over the next 20 years.

Smith “loved Pitt and he’d loved his job there,” Barbara Smith said this week. “He kept in touch with lots of people from the University.” Tyler Smith added: “All of us in the family had a great fondness not only for the University but for the city itself. It’s a great place.” In addition to his wife and son, Smith is survived by a daughter, Susan Warren of Keenesburg; four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Memorial contributions in Smith’s name can be made to Hospice and Palliative Care of Northern Colorado, 2726 W. 11th Street, Greeley, Colo. 80634, and to the University of Kansas Endowment, P.O. Box 928, Lawrence, Kan. 60044.

— Bruce Steele