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Nancy Smith passed away at 82. SUBMITTED PHOTO
Here’s the short list of Nancy Smith’s adversaries:
Those on the other side of the divorce court aisle;
The bass of local lakes and the fish of wherever she cast a line.
Other than that, Smith, the “better” half of Kissimmee’s legal “power couple” for decades, was a pillar of the Kissimmee community she loved, and it loved her right back.
Smith, a high school principal before entering law practice and an avid fisherman, passed away Saturday at the age of 82.
A small and private service is coming together but a public memorial is being planned.
“With everything going on, Mom would have hated if people got together for this, then anybody got sick,” said her son, Clay Selfridge.
Nancy and her last of five husbands, Norman Smith, formed the Smiths of downtown Kissimmee’s law firm of Brinson, Smith and Smith. Norman, who passed away in 2015, spent his decades-long career in property law and environmental law and was an attorney for the Osceola County School Board. Nancy, who Selfridge said, “Got tired of seeing parents stuck in one-way streets,” left education to become an arearenowned divorce lawyer and practiced in the same office as her husband for 34 years.
“If you were divorced in this area from the 1970s until about 2000, she either represented you … or she was on the other side,” Kissimmee attorney Stacy McCland said.
“And you wanted her on your side,” Selfridge said.
Away from the law office — and there wasn’t much of that time — Nancy Smith loved fishing, and meeting up for games like mahjong with longtime friends like local mental health counselor Renee Bronson.
“Those things kept her mind very sharp. Nancy had an exuberant love of life,” said Bronson, who knew Smith from the church community at First United Methodist Church, later as her divorce attorney and through it all as a lifelong friend. “She did great things for women in our area. (Local attorney) Stephen Miles called her, ‘the meanest attorney in town.’ But if she made a promise, that was it.”
Later, each week, faithfully, she’d read to First United school students in the persona of “Nancy Tuckett” — the name of the family dog.
“She’d read while wearing this apron custom-made for her, with all these pockets,” Bronson said. “She’d have hundreds of little objects she’d give to the kids based on what she was reading. She had a captive audience.”
Smith was in the choir, an usher and member of the mission team at First United. Smith gave her time for personal causes, such as Another Mother for Peace, an anti-Vietnam War advocacy group, then later as a director on the Board of Osceola Mental Health. She used her love of fishing to start “Angling Against Cancer”, wrote a longtime fishing column and was proud of her top bass catch, a 10 3/4-pounder.
“She prided herself on beating all the local guys on the lake,” Selfridge said. “Whenever she and Norman traveled, she’d make sure she’d take a day and go fishing with a guide.”
Nancy wasn’t just a trend-setter on the water. After earning her education degree from Florida State and rising to the principal ranks in Brevard County, she went back to college and earned a University of Florida law degree in 1977. She’d go on to help operate Osceola Teen Court, a diversion program to keep minors’ first offenses out of juvenile or circuit court, and worked with the iDignity program to help those who had little access to documents get IDs and Driver’s licenses needed for jobs.
“She wanted to make a difference for families, so she put herself through law school while working and raising a family,” Selfridge said. “She helped crack or break a number of glass ceilings for women here. She was a wonderful person who did great things.”
Before his passing, Norman arranged for his and Nancy’s coffins to be made out of a large, custom-made wooden conference table in their law office — the running line among friends and family is that they could continue “working from the office” even in passing.
Selfridge pointed to a saying that “hung on the wall forever” in the family home that read:
“A broader view, a saner mind, a little more love for all mankind;
A little more care of what we say, a little more charity every day;
Not as we take but as we give, not as we pray but as we live.”
“The whole family tried to live that way,” he said.
