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Say Hello to Albert Smith and Be Prepared to Smile
Say Hello to Albert Smith and Be Prepared to Smile
By Leonard Shapiro
Maybe you’ve met Albert Smith while driving into the Upperville or Warrenton horse shows, where he’s been a fixture in recent years checking parking passes and helping direct traffic.
Maybe you’ve seen him mixing and serving adult beverages at a local private party, or noticed him stocking the shelves at the Middleburg Safeway, or better yet, lovingly taking care of a horse at the Middleburg Training Center. He once walked one of those Thoroughbreds around the paddock at Pimlico in Baltimore before a long ago Preakness Stakes race.
And chances are you’ve probably seen him all around the village, chatting up a friend or even a few strangers looking for a good place to grab a bite or a cold drink.
And always, you’ve seen him with a glowing smile in his face, always friendly and happy to shoot the breeze about anything at all.
“Hello, good afternoon, how can I help you?” he greeted a slightly confused driver not sure if she was in the proper parking lot one day at the Upperville Horse show in June. She was, and Albert pointed her in the right direction and called out “have a great day” as she pulled away and headed to an open spot.
Albert Smith grew up in Willisville, an historic African-American enclave near Upperville and then moved to nearby St. Louis in 1976. He attended Norfolk State, then started a sales career at the old Hecht’s Department Store in Fair Oaks shopping center in Fairfax.
“I was one of the top salesmen in the store,” he said. “I’ve always believed in customer service, helping people out as much as I can.”
After a few years, he also admitted, “I got retail burnout” and came back out to Middleburg, where he’s held a variety of jobs, including working with horses for several local owners and trainers, doing a stint on the town’s maintenance staff and then, suffering a back injury while employed at Safeway that eventually needed surgery.
He’s had serious medical issues ever since, mostly due to diabetes that went unchecked for many years. “After the surgery, I had issues with my feet,” he said. “I really hadn’t gone to a doctor for 30 years, so many of the problems I have now are my own fault.”
A week after the 2022 Upperville Horse Show, Albert got the bad news.
“I went to the doctor and he said to me ‘Mr. Smith, you’re going to lose that leg. I had really poor circulation. He found out I had diabetes, and they took it off. I was in the hospital for 14 days, then did the rehab, then the leg got infected and they had to take some more off.”
Despite that catastrophe, Albert Smith still manages to remain upbeat, and smiling all the way, crediting his family and his girlfriend, Katina Ewell with helping him stay that way.
Albert Smith walks with a prosthetic leg. He can still drive. He has a legion of friends and relatives. And smiles all the time.
“My grandfather was a blacksmith,” he said. “I had a guy who knew him tell me once ‘you are just like him, always laughing, always smiling, you never get mad about anything.’”
A Middleburg treasure, in every way.
