Years ago, when two Little Rock bankers flying to Shreveport made an emergency landing at the tiny Stephens airstrip in southwest Ouachita County, they thought they were stranded after learning there was no rental car service for miles.
Then they met Virginia Turner Smith.
Smith promptly offered the two bankers the use of her Cadillac -- provided that they leave the keys to the airplane with her. They took her up on the deal, drove back to Little Rock and then returned her car a few days later.
"She was always in the right place at the right time for her whole life," said lifelong friend Ted Wagnon.
Smith, 83, died Monday at the Ouachita County Medical Center in Camden of complications from emphysema. She was preceded in death by her husband, Guy R. Smith, and is survived by two sons and two daughters.
Friends remember Smith as a caring person who would help anyone in need.
"She made you feel like you were the one person she really wanted to see that day," Wagnon said. "She'd tell us she loved us every time she left, even if she saw us three times a day."
Smith was born in Stephens in 1930 and considered the small town the "capital of her world," said daughter Dana S. Hunt of Hot Springs. She could have lived anywhere -- her father, Buck Turner, ran a lucrative oil drilling business, and Smith's husband later took over the operation.
"Stephens really was the center of her universe," Wagnon said.
For decades, she ran Marvelous Monday, a church-based after-school program for elementary school children that featured crafts.
"That was the hottest thing around," said Stephens Recorder and Treasurer Jamie Cushman, who attended Smith's program as a child. "You knew Monday was coming, and it wasn't like, 'Oh, no. Monday.' It was, 'Yes!'"
Smith donated a family owned building to the city of Stephens, which now uses it as its municipal building, Cushman said. She also donated another building for the city's library.
"She was always, always giving," Cushman said. "I'd give my left arm to be half the woman she was."
Last year, the city honored her by proclaiming Aug. 24 as Virginia Smith Day.
Smith was a homemaker, but she did hold one job years ago, daughter Dee Bonds said. It didn't turn out well.
"She told me this six months ago," Bonds said. "She was so serious when she said the one job she had was working the concession stand at Stephens High School.
"She said, 'I got fired from that because I talked to everybody and couldn't make change fast enough,'" Bonds said.
"It's been an honor to be her daughter."
Wagnon's father worked for Smith's husband in drilling for oil. In the winter, Guy Smith often created "Christmas wells" -- wells that he knew wouldn't produce oil but provided jobs for his workers during Christmastime.
"By the time I was 10 or 11, I knew who put Christmas under our tree," Wagnon said. "Virginia did that on a daily basis. She just did all this stuff because she knew it was the right thing to do. Her approach was if she ever needed something, anybody [in Stephens] would help her.
"She was one of those people who had a smile and a hug and called everyone, 'Darlin','" he said.
Hunt said she remembered when her mother loaned the two bankers her Cadillac.
"My dad asked her where the car was," she said. "She said she gave it to two bankers who had to land their plane here and got stranded. He said, 'What?' and she said 'I got the keys to the airplane.'
"That was our mother," said Hunt, who is moving back to her mother's home in Stephens next month after living in Hot Springs for 20 years. "I tried, but I can never match her."
State Desk on 06/26/2014