Leroy Smothers was among the first in his family line to live, work, and die entirely in a modern urban-industrial environment.  He traveled by automobile, not on horseback; he read by electric light, not candle or lamp light; he cooked and heated his home with natural gas and electricity, not wood; he ate food produced by others, not food grown or raised by himself; and he lived in apartments or homes on 1/4 acre suburban lots, not on 40+ acre farms.  Not only was he one of the first in his Smothers family to be reared completely away from agricultural life, Leroy also was the first to obtain an advanced, formal education, and the first to have what we now call a white-collar professional career.  This is not to say that he did not experience and enjoy old-fashioned rural activities such as fishing, hunting, gardening, and woodworking.  He did enjoy those activities; but he enjoyed them as recreational hobbies and not as essential parts of his everyday existence.  Leroy was in many respects as much a pioneer in life as were his early ancestors.  Unfortunately, he also was the first of his line in many generations to die while still a young man, at age 45, his life shortened by products of two of our nation's most disgraceful industries: alcohol and tobacco.  Another needless and shameful product of modern American industry, the handgun, would take the life of his wife, Elly, at the young age of 53.
 

Life in Southern California & Germany.

Born on 4 February 1923 in the suburban town of Huntington Park, Los Angeles County, Leroy spent all of his childhood and much of his young adulthood in southern California.  Sometime about 1926 to 1930, his parents, William Roy and Jean Franklin Smothers, purchased a recently built two-bedroom home with a detached garage near Huntington Park in the newly formed town of Maywood, located just south of the City of Los Angeles.  Although family members no longer own it, their Maywood home, located at 4405 East 57th Street, is still standing today.  Leroy was an only-child, but he had many relatives living in southern California to help overcome that isolation.  His Smothers relatives had come to California from Missouri a few years before Leroy was born, and his mother's Franklin relatives migrated to the Los Angeles area from Oklahoma to escape the hard economic conditions that existed in the late 1920's through the 1930's.  Leroy's father, Roy, in fact had played a significant role in helping his Franklin relatives relocate to California by finding them jobs in the carpentry and lumber trades in which he was employed.  So, Leroy grew up within a fairly large, closely knit family circle.  He interacted with his relatives frequently, perhaps even daily, and enjoyed camping, hunting, and fishing trips with them while young.  He continued to enjoy those activities into adulthood.  Tall as a young man at six feet, slender, blue eyed, and red haired, Leroy was teasingly called by the nicknames "Pink" and "Short" by his parents, aunts, and uncles......but, not by anyone else.  He did not seem to be fond of his given name, Leroy, or perhaps he was just too mindful that he had no middle name, and he made an effort while still a young man to legally split his name to Lee Roy.  (Leroy soon gave up tilting at that windmill, and went by just Leroy from the mid 1940's onward.)

Leroy graduated from high school about 1941, by which time Europe was already deeply embroiled in what would soon become the Second World War.  He entered the United States Army on 12 January 1943.  Whether he enlisted as a volunteer or was drafted is not known.  But, since he was the only child in his family, his parents made sure that Leroy received a deferment from combat duty.  Assigned to the Army Air Corps, which after the war would become the United States Air Force, Leroy apparently was stationed within the United States from 1943 through 1944.  Soon after the surrender of Germany on 7 May 1945, Leroy was attached to the United States occupying forces in Munich, Germany, where he was stationed until the early part of 1946.

During his three-year military tour, Leroy was promoted to sergeant at least once, which was his rank upon receiving his honorable discharge on 7 April 1946.  According to family lore, he also was demoted in rank at least once for insubordination to an officer.  Leroy rarely spoke about his military "career" later in life, but when he did he made it clear he did not much enjoy the experience, and he rarely, if ever, had anything positive to say about military officers.

Leroy's military life certainly was not always unpleasant, however.  While stationed in Munich he found time to meet a German girl, Isabella Elizabeth "Elly" Mˆssner, who he courted and would marry a few years later.  Once discharged from the Army in 1946, Leroy returned to southern California, still single, and enrolled in Compton College, which is located in the City of Compton in Los Angeles County, about 8 miles south of his parent's home in Maywood.  It is not known if Leroy received an intermediate degree from Compton, but he did finish college in 1950 with a Bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (go Trojans!).  During his college years, 1946 to 1950, Leroy kept in contact by mail with the German girl, Elly Mˆssner, who he had met in Munich.  It is not clear when he first proposed marriage to Elly, or whether it was done by letter or in-person; but, after his college graduation in 1950 Leroy traveled back to Germany to meet Elly, and on 15 September of that year they were married in Munich.  Few details of their honeymoon are known, but it is likely they spent at least a week or two in Europe before Leroy brought his new bride back to California, where they honeymooned for a while in the Sierra Mountains, camping and traveling by horseback.

Isabella Elizabeth "Elly" Mˆssner, or Moessner as her surname is commonly spelled outside of Germany, was born 13 May 1930 in the Bavarian city of M¸nchen (Munich).  Her parents, Karl Gustav Mˆssner and Maria Bullinger, were recently married when Elly was born.  One of her parents seems to have been previously married.  Elly in later life spoke of her brother who had died in World War II while serving in an SS unit on the Russian Front.  It is unlikely that this brother was born after Elly, as he then would have been well under 15 years old at the end of the war, so he probably was an older stepbrother.  Elly and her parents were living in a suburb of Munich when the Allied Forces bombed the city, circa 1944-45.  She was clearly traumatized by the war, particularly by the bombings, and would suffer nightmares about it for the remainder of her life.

Exactly how Elly met her future husband, Leroy Smothers, is not known.  Perhaps their meeting occurred in a German beer or dance hall where American soldiers frequented?  It might even be that Elly and Leroy met in an establishment run by her father.....after the war Karl Mˆssner was a proprietor of small bars in Munich in the 1950's and 1960's.  However their meeting occurred, it led to a long distance courtship that was conducted for several years by overseas mail.  Ironically, their marriage would ultimately end as a long distance relationship, with their last contact by overseas mail.

Leroy neither spoke nor read German, as far as I remember, so Elly must have learned some English while she was young.  As an adult, after her marriage, she was very fluent in English and spoke with just a slight German accent.  Small in stature, Elly was olive skinned, dark eyed, and raven-haired.  Always intellectually adept and well read, Elly obviously had been given a good primary school education, though she did not attend college.  She became a very strong bridge player in the late 1950's, eventually earning a masters ranking.  Raising her children was always a priority for Elly.  She never was formally employed outside the home, which seems to have made her feel unsure of herself later in life when her children were grown and married.

Leroy and Elly Smothers lived the first two years or so of their marriage in an apartment near his parent's Maywood home.  (The apartment probably was in Huntington Park.)  Their first child, William Karl "Bill" Smothers, the author of this biography, was born in a Los Angeles City hospital in 1952.  The family moved a year or two later to a newly built "baby boom" ranch-style home located at 14539 Cedarsprings Drive in Whittier, California, which is about fifteen miles southeast of Los Angeles City.   A second and final child, daughter Karen Maria Smothers, was born to Leroy and Elly in 1955 in hospital in the nearby town of Montebello, California.

Leroy was employed by the Southern California Gas Company for about the first 6-8 years of his marriage.  The details of his work are not known, but, as a civil engineer, design and building of natural gas pipelines possibly were areas of expertise for him.  He also seems to have had some duties as a surveyor.  Outside of his work, Leroy was interested in carpentry as a hobby, and he maintained a woodworking shop in his family garage, equipped with an expensive electric table saw (Shopsmith tm).  He used his woodworking shop to build things for their Whittier home, including a chicken coop for the back yard, where Leroy kept bantam chickens of all things!  This seems to have had more to do with wanting a source of fresh eggs than with an interest in exotic pets -- Leroy kept no other pets of his own that I am aware of.  In addition to carpentry, Leroy also had an interest in recreational sailing.  In 1957 he purchased a small sailboat (16-20 ft?) called "Li'l Babe" that he kept berthed at a pacific coast marina near Los Angeles.

Sometime in 1957, or perhaps even a little earlier, Leroy started looking for another job.  Exactly what sparked this interest in changing employers is not entirely known; but, in later years, Elly did mention that they wanted to distance themselves a bit from their relatives in southern California.  The weekly family gatherings, often held at his parent's home in Maywood, and other obligations to their many nearby relatives was apparently causing some strain, either for Elly or Leroy, or both of them.  So, Leroy applied for a new job as a civil engineer with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is the agency responsible for administering much of the foreign aid that is given out by the U. S. government.
 

South Korea.

In 1958, Leroy received his first assignment with USAID: A two-year tour of duty in post-war South Korea working as a civil engineer.  Leroy and Elly sold their home in Whittier that year and moved the family to Korea, with Leroy perhaps being the first to arrive.  During the summer or fall of 1958, Leroy, Elly and their two children traveled from California to Hawaii by water on the USS President Cleveland, which was a passenger ship belonging to the now defunct Presidential Lines.  After a brief stay in Honolulu, the family flew by propeller driven airplane to Japan and then on to Seoul, Korea, which was to be their home for the next four years.

Upon arriving in South Korea in 1958, Leroy Smothers and family stayed briefly at the well known, historic Chosun Hotel in Seoul, which is still in business today.  They soon moved to the outskirts of Seoul to a small western-style house on the lower slopes of Nam San Mountain.  Their single-story house was in an area called New Itaewon that was at that time populated mostly by westerners.  Several miles distant, the house overlooked Seoul City and the United States Military Base located in Seoul that served as headquarters to the U.S. Eighth Army.  Every day at 5:00 PM there was a brief honor guard ceremony at the base in which a bugler played taps while the American flag was lowered for the day, and then a field artillery piece would be fired, with the cannon's salute reverberating all throughout the city.  Military equipment and the ghosts of war were everywhere in South Korea at that time.  (The Korean War, 1950-1953, had ended just five years earlier.)  Reconstruction was well underway, but many rebuilt buildings and bridges were still pocket by bullets and artillery, and it was easy for young boys such as the author to collect spent ammunition and military relics in the denuded hills and rice paddies around Seoul.

Leroy and family remained in their New Itaewon home near Seoul for most of their first tour.  After two years on assignment, USAID employees were given a 2-3 month vacation, typically called "home leave" as it normally was spent back in the States.  In late 1960, Leroy's family went on their first home leave.  They traveled by plane from Korea and flew westward, stopping in Hong Kong.  Leroy then returned to southern California to visit his parents while Elly and their two children continued westward through Pakistan on the way to Munich, Germany, to visit with her parents.  Elly and the children stayed in Germany for 2-3 months in her mother's home outside of Munich.  Elly's father, then divorced, lived in a small apartment in Munich near/at the little pub or bar that he owned and operated.  After the Christmas Holidays, Elly and the children traveled to southern California and then back to Korea to rejoin Leroy for their second two-year tour starting in 1961.  This home leave of 1960-61 was the first in a series of long separations that Leroy and Elly would go through, perhaps indicating that their marriage already was troubled.  Soon after returning to Seoul, South Korea, Leroy and family moved into a relatively new two-family duplex located in the "South Post" section of the military base in Seoul.  Nearby, there also was a "North Post" section to the base, which is where the headquarters buildings, enlisted men's barracks, Post Exchange, theater, and parade ground were located.  South Post, which was bordered on one side by the Han River, had the officer's quarters, housing for civilian and military families, the U.S. military-run elementary and high schools, and the Officer's and Non-Commissioned Officer's clubs and golf course.

Leroy spent a total of 4-5 years working in South Korea, with his second and final tour of duty ending in mid-1963.  During those years he worked largely on the construction of water treatment facilities and pipelines for the Koreans.  Leroy frequently traveled around South Korea and was often away from his home and family in Seoul while he worked in cities such as Pusan and Taegue.  He had at least one close western friend or colleague in Korea, an American named John Fletcher, and Leroy seemed to be well liked by the Korean's that he worked with.  His prolonged absences from home created a strain in his marriage with Elly, and his relationship with his family became more and more distant with time.  There were happy family moments with Leroy in Korea, however, especially during those rare times when the whole family would vacation together at Lake Chung Pyung, a hydroelectric-dam reservoir located at the headwaters of the Han River, northeast of Seoul.
 

South Vietnam.

Following his second home leave in 1963, Leroy moved on to a new assignment with USAID and was sent to Saigon, South Vietnam, which at that time was not yet fully enveloped by the war with North Vietnam.  Leaving southern California just after visiting with his parents and relatives for the Thanksgiving holiday, Leroy arrived in Saigon with Elly and his children on the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, 22 November 1963.  The family had just left  Saigon's Tan San Nhut Airport and settled into a temporary apartment when news of the assassination was announced.

Leroy and family soon moved into an old, two-story, whitewashed, French colonial era home.   Built of masonry, it had 15-20 foot high ceilings for coolness and three large bedrooms upstairs.  The property itself, about 1/4 acre, was surrounded by a gated, 6-7 foot high masonry wall topped by shards of broken glass, and there was a detached building in the back for servants quarters (yes, we employed Vietnamese servants).  It was more a stone-cold mansion than a home, and not anything like houses that the Smothers had lived in before or since.  The house/mansion was located at 63 Mac Dinh Chi Street in Saigon, not far from a large cemetery at the end of the street, and probably still stands to this day.

The first year in Saigon was relatively pleasant, despite the slowly escalating war with communist North Vietnam.  It generally was not safe to travel outside Saigon, but Leroy, Elly and family did manage to take vacation trips to the Vietnamese resort city of Dalat, located in the mountains north of Saigon, and to the seaside beach resort of Nha Trang.  Like Saigon, both these places had many buildings from the French colonial era, and the local population spoke French as a second language.  After 1964, however, it soon became almost impossible for American civilians to travel safely in the South Vietnam countryside, and even Saigon itself was not without risk.

For historical perspective, it is noted that United States involvement in South Vietnamese affairs began in the mid-1950s, as the French colonial government collapsed and withdrew following the defeat of the French Foreign Legion by Vietnamese forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.  In 1954-1955,  Vietnam was partitioned into communist North Vietnam and (so-called) democratic South Vietnam, with the latter supported by the United States.   But it was not until December 1961 that the first U.S. combat-support troops were sent to that country.  By February 1962, the U.S. had established the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) and more than 3000 personnel were stationed throughout the Republic of Vietnam (RVN).  As the South's conflict with the northern communist forces expanded, the number of U.S. personnel in Vietnam also grew.  On November 1, 1963, the inept South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem, was overthrown in a military coup, probably with the blessing of the U.S.  By end of that year there were 16,500 U.S. support troops on duty.  In 1964, the first U.S. combat forces arrived.  In February 1965,  North Vietnamese forces attacked the United States Army Barracks at Pleiku, which resulted in retaliatory strikes.  With approximately 50, 000 ground troops in Vietnam by the end of 1965, the U.S. was now on path to a senseless, needless, and disastrous war that would ultimately claim the lives of 58,000 Americans and 2-3 million Indochinese, and would cost the U.S. 150 billion dollars.

In 1964-65, following several terrorist-style bombings of U.S. facilities and barracks in and around Saigon by Viet Cong guerillas, it was decided that all non-essential U.S. civilian dependents would be evacuated out of Vietnam.  Leroy stayed to continue his work with USAID, but Elly and their two children left Saigon and moved back to Seoul, Korea, where they lived for the next year or so.  This time, upon returning to Korea, Elly and her children stayed in a small one-bedroom apartment directly overlooking the Han River on the south side of Seoul.  The multi story apartment building was situated a few hundred yards from the river within a modern housing area known as UN Village, which still exists today.

Leroy and his family were reunited, briefly, during his next biannual "home leave" in 1966.  They met in Honolulu, Hawaii, and vacationed a short while there before flying back to Maywood, California, to visit with Leroy's parents.  Near the end of this home leave, there was a large family gathering and dinner at the Smothers' Maywood home.  This essentially was the last time Leroy was to be with his wife and children.

After home leave in 1966, Leroy returned to Saigon for another tour working with USAID, which at that time probably was part of the United States Overseas Mission (USOM).  His wife and children were sent to live in Manila, Philippine Islands, not far from the United States Subic Bay Naval Base.  There they lived in a modern, two story, single-family home in a housing development with other American families whose husbands/fathers were in Vietnam.  It is not known what the exact nature of Leroy's work was in Vietnam at this time; but, as in Korea, he was generally employed as a civil engineer and so probably helped in the design and construction of water treatment facilities for the Vietnamese government.

Leroy chose to have very little contact with his family after returning to Saigon in 1966.  There were no personal visits, no phone calls, and few letters.  His relationship with Elly was clearly very strained, and he apparently took in a Vietnamese mistress to live with him.  His health had become a serious issue for him as he was suffering from the effects of many years of smoking, alcohol abuse, and prolonged exposure to unsanitary local foods and water.  Some digestive health problems, in fact, seem to have started back in Korea during his many field trips there.  Then, on 27 March 1968, word was sent by telegram to Elly in Manila that Leroy had died.  According to a medical report issued by USAID/USOM, Leroy died of a heart attack at his residence in Saigon.  A life-long smoker and moderately heavy drinker, Leroy's sudden death at age 45 nevertheless came as a surprise to his family back in Manila.

Elly and her children returned to southern California soon after Leroy's death.  His body was sent back from Vietnam and he was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, where his parents would soon be laid to rest.  Elly's family lived for a little over a year in Maywood in a rented house near Leroy's parents, with her children attending school in the nearby town of Bell.  Then, in 1969, at her son's prompting, Elly bravely packed up the family and moved once again.  This time they settled in Fort Pierce, St. Lucie County, Florida, where there were two old friends of Elly's from Korea, Carroll and Harriet Hodges.

Elly remained in the Fort Pierce area for the rest of her life.  In the late 1970's, she made one or two brief trips back to Munich, Germany, to visit her ailing mother, who was dying of cancer, and her divorced father.  Both of Elly's children were married in Florida in the 1970's:  Karen first, to James Minton of Ft. Pierce, and then Bill, to Marguerite Fowler of Vero Beach.  For the first half dozen years or so in Florida, Elly lived just north of Fort Pierce in a waterfront home at 909 Jackson Way, North Beach; but in the late 1970's she sold that home and moved into a smaller, easier to care for condominium in town.  Elly, who had lived and raised her children largely on her own since the mid-1960's, gradually became despondent in Florida once Bill and Karen had married and left home.  Elly was clearly suffering from clinical depression by the time she sold her house on Jackson Way.  She had, in fact, made several unsuccessful attempts at suicide while living there.  Elly underwent psychiatric treatment for her depression, but the doctors and their medicines were of little help to her.  On 19 December 1983,  Elly found a loaded handgun in her son-in-law's home and ended her life, a tragic victim of her illness and America's gun industry.  She was laid to rest under a live oak tree in White City Cemetery, St. Lucie County, Florida, just south of Fort Pierce.
 

Written by William K. Smothers, Hockessin, Delaware, son of Leroy Smothers & Isabella Elizabeth "Elly" Mˆssner.  Updated 5 December 2002.  Copyright © 2002 William K. Smothers, all rights reserved.  No part of this biography, text or graphics, may be copied or reproduced without the expressed written consent of the author, William K. Smothers.

Related biographical sketches: Leroy's parents William Roy Smothers and Minnie Nora "Jean" Franklin

Photographs: Click-on the thumbnail image at the top of this page!