OBITUARY: HUGH “SMITTY” SMYTH 1928-2025
Right before school began in the fall of 1970, Donna Cederburg wed Hugh Smyth in Reno, Nevada, the timing driven not by the imminence of the next school campaign, but by the imminence of the sage hen hunting season.
So when the kids arrived for their first day of school in Bridgeport, Calif., they learned that Miss Cederburg would now answer by a new name.
As one parent told Donna the next day, this is what her child said when he got home. “Mom, Miss Cederburg isn’t Miss Cederburg anymore. She’s Mrs. Smitty the Plumber!”
Smitty Smythe, a Bridgeport institution since 1961, the only man living or dead who knows the location of every pipe in and under every building in Bridgeport, passed away this week at his second home in Palm Desert. He died of nothing more than peaceful old age. He was 96.
Smitty was born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut in 1928, the son of a craftsman and shipbuilder who one day would own the West Mystic (Conn.) shipyard.
Smitty grew up in coastal towns in both Massachusetts and Connecticut before graduating from Groton (Conn.) high school, whereupon he joined the Marines and was stationed at Quantico, Va.
His claim to fame as a Marine was becoming the All Navy Middleweight Eastern Division Boxing Champion in 1948.
That distinction won him a trip to compete in a national competition in San Diego – and once he visited San Diego, he vowed to return. Who, after all, needs the cold winters and mosquito- and humidity-plagued summers of New England when a shangri la such as California exists?
It took him a few years to make it the left coast. There was trade school (he was certified to become a diesel mechanic in Long Beach), a stint working at his father’s shipyard, and a few years working for the Cummins Corp. in south Florida.
But in 1952, he finally took off cross-country on his motorcycle and landed in El Segundo, working for North American Aviation (later acquired by Rockwell, and now a part of Boeing).
During his time at North American, he met a guy (Smitty was the type of gregarious character who met guys and created opportunities for himself) who was interested in opening up a string of laundromats. The guy taught Smitty the plumbing trade and the two eventually established their own company – P&H Plumbing – and opened the string of laundromats as promised.
But the outdoors, mountains, hiking and fishing spoke to Smitty more than spin cycles and the jangling of quarters.
So he moved to Bridgeport (where he’d visited previously on hunting trips), and took odd jobs at first to get to know people and build a reputation before launching his construction and plumbing business.
He ran that business – building new homes, thawing lots of pipes and repairing residential and county water systems. until 2015, when he was 87 years old.
He met his wife, quite ironically, outside a laundromat which used to be behind the Bridgeport Inn. Miss Cederburg, a flatlander from Trona, had slipped on the ice outside, and Smitty offered assistance in getting her to her feet.
Now Smitty by this time was a confirmed bachelor. 41 years old. Miss Cederburg was 24.
And yet, they still managed to squeeze in 54 years of marriage.
For her part, Donna taught in the local schools for forty years, eventually serving as school principal.
The two of them did not have children of their own, unless you count the children of Bridgeport and Coleville, in which case they had more than a thousand. They were a fixture at all the high school athletic contests. For thirteen years, they sponsored an academic scholarship at Coleville High School.
And as Lynda Pemberton said, Smitty taught plenty of kids how to box in his garage, which was outfitted with a heavy bag and a speed bag. Donna said he worked out regularly in that garage until he was 80 years old.
During the summers, Smitty and Donna hosted a bevy of nieces and nephews, and the town of Bridgeport appreciated the annual influx of summer labor.
When he slowed down in the plumbing business (he refused to say he retired), he turned his high energy to his garden and demonstrated that you could grow 500 pounds of potatoes in a small area. He shared the bounty with the town of Bridgeport and allowed the primary students at BES to come over to harvest vegetables in the fall.
A veritable billy goat, Smitty often disappeared into the mountains for the day. And was popular with friends and family because he knew all the best hunting spots.
As Donna says, her husband was simply “unique.” And was imbued with a strong ethic – for work, for community, for fairness. “He would speak up when something was wrong,” she said.
Smitty was proof that Mayors, true Mayors, true leaders, are not elected so much as anointed.
*In fact, when Erinn Wells contacted The Sheet about his passing, her first sentence was, “Just a heads up that Smitty passed away. He is like the king of Bridgeport … “
Donna said that Smitty suffered from a bit of dementia in his later years, but until his final day, he was coherent and sweet with the nurses.
His favorite thing over the past few years was sitting in the shade of a tree in his garden.
Conjuring an image of Ferdinand the Bull, just sitting quietly and smelling the flowers.
A great man has left us. To make up for his loss, the rest of us need to get slightly and collectively better.
A memorial for Smitty will be held on the lawn at the Bridgeport Inn on Saturday, May 31 at 11 a.m.
