Daniel Bennett Smith Sr

Daniel Bennett Smith Sr. - "D.B." - was the youngest of three children born to Everett and Alice Bennett Smith in Cecilton, Maryland. He joined the Cecilton Volunteer Fire Company in 1937, at fifteen, and never left the fire service again.

He entered the Marines in June 1944 and was sent to the South Pacific as a heavy machine gunner with the 1st Marine Division. He saw action in the invasion of Okinawa. After recovering from a wound he returned to Okinawa, and his unit was then staged to practise for the invasion of Japan. The atomic bomb was dropped and he was reassigned to China instead. He came home in 1946.

He was hired at Aberdeen Proving Ground as a firefighter, starting with test aircraft fires at the air base, and stayed thirty-two years - Fire Fighter, Fire Prevention Chief, Assistant Chief, and twenty years as Fire Chief. He retired in 1978.

Through all of it he served the Aberdeen Volunteer Fire Department, and remained a member until the day he died: Junior Officer, Assistant Chief, Fire Chief, and a long-serving member of the Board of Directors. He instructed for the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute for twenty-five years, and sat on the governor-appointed Maryland Fire Prevention Commission for over seventeen.

He married Sara Johnson in 1939. They were married eighty-one years and had four children. They visited every state, starting with a pickup camper and working their way to a motor home, and drove across the country and through Canada to Alaska.

He celebrated his hundredth birthday on 19 December 2021 at his home in Aberdeen, with his children, away from his care facility because of the COVID restrictions. He died peacefully nine months later.

He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Children: Daniel B. Smith Jr. (Barbara), William E. Smith, Sandra Smith Rokos, Robert D. Smith (Lisa). Grandchildren: William Smith Jr., Dave Smith, Linda Schwartz, Diana Russell, Michael Smith, Rebecca Smith, Sara Texcocana. Nineteen great grandchildren and twenty-two great great grandchildren.