Reflections on Coronado A Life of Service to Country & Community with Admiral Lou Smith
“One of the things I love about Coronado is that everyone has a story. A good one. Every day I look in awe at all the accomplished people that live around me,” reflected Lou Smith. That’s Rear Admiral Louis M. Smith, USN (Retired), to be accurate. Smith’s story is a good one, too. Before we get into his professional story, and his Coronado story, let’s go way back. Smith and his two older sisters were born and grew up on Milwaukee’s South Side. “In those days it was where all the Germans, Poles, Latvians, Estonians, and Lithuanians lived. Everyone in my neighborhood had an accent,” he recalled. He is half Greek, half German. All four of his grandparents were immigrants. “Both of my grandfathers came here to avoid serving on what would turn out to be the losing side of World War I - one in Germany and the other in Greece for the Ottoman Empire.” Prescience and visionary perspective seem to be inherited traits in the Smith family. Smith was a bright, but scrappy kid in a working class neighborhood, in a differ-
ent time in America. He excelled in school but his high energy didn’t always please his teachers. “I once got an A/F on my report card [A in academics, F in citizenship]. But that short attention span that got me in so much trouble in high school has served me so well ever since,” he chuckled. He and his sisters were the first in their family to go to college. “I would never have been able to go to college without the NROTC scholarship I received,” said Smith. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Marquette University and later a Masters degree from Purdue University School of Engineering. After college Smith’s first duty station was in Hawaii. He was busy at his first post but returned to Milwaukee for a very special occasion. His mom was graduating from college with a teaching credential and he wanted to be there. At the ceremony he met a classmate of hers. “Mom introduced me to her very nice blonde classmate, Susan, and I thought…. she’s really cute. I had four days to kill before flying back so I asked her out.”
P56 | Coronado Magazine
