Friends remember Bruce Lee Smith

HARLINGEN — Friends met Saturday night to laugh and share mem-
ories of a man whose writing, photographs and humor impacted an entire community.
The memory of Bruce Lee Smith, 54, who died Aug. 15 after a lengthy illness, lit up a room full of people at Ol’ D’s Soda Shop Saturday, many of his old photographs decorating the downtown restaurant.

Melinda Smith, a longtime friend who came down from New Braunfels, remembered Bruce Lee Smith as a clever, creative artist and writer.

“He just had a force about him…He had a love for life, he would squeeze the meat and marrow out of life,” she said.

“And as funny as he was, he could have been a stand-up comedian.”

Chris Hardcastle, a friend of roughly 20 years, said he’ll never forget Smith’s sense of humor.
“His sense of humor, oh man, it was unstoppable,” he remarked. “He could put a twist on even the most boring of situations. The jokes would just be flying so fast you could not keep up,” he laughed.

Drumming up memories of his old friend, Hardcastle said, “I miss him already.”

Smith’s sister, Ruth Smith, visiting from California, looked around the room saying, “This was his home here, it’s clear he was so well loved down here.”

“He was just so talented, and I’m sorry he’s gone so soon.”

During the evening, Ruth Smith was presented with a plaque that Bruce Lee Smith won in Valley Morning Star’s 2010 Readers’ Choice Awards for Best Photographer.

Smith was a longtime Valley Morning Star entertainment and features writer. He left the Star in 2008.

In April 2009, Smith and two of his former colleagues at the Valley Morning Star won second place in the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors competition for a 2008 feature series called Uncommon Valor, three days of stories about the Rio Grande Valley’s Medal of Honor recipients. Uncommon Valor was published at the end of May 2008 to coincide with Memorial Day.

Smith and his colleagues spent more than a month in exhaustive research on the series.
Victoria Cantu, who considered Smith like a father, said, “He was such a great inspiration for my life and he was always there for everything; every recital, everything.”

“He was always able to make me laugh. Even if it was a bad day, he could make me laugh so hard,” she said.

Star assistant city editor Ed Asher contributed to this story.