Smith Brothers’ Early Years

Apartment Don and Marie Smith (CERNIK) lived in with Mark and Dave in Wahoo, NE.

Mark and Dave were both born in Wahoo, our mom’s hometown. My dad was still in the Air Force when Mark was born. I guess that makes him an Air Force brat. Dave was born after dad had left the service and was now working at the Mead Nebraska plant where they made bombs, bazooka rockets and howitzer shells as a Civil service ammunition inspector.

The plant was closing in 1954 and my parents had a choice, move to White Sands, New Mexico to work on slightly bigger bombs (A-bombs you know) or find a new job. He saw an advertisement for IBM in Omaha, so they moved the whopping 45 miles away to start a new career and household. They got themselves the apartment below and got to work.

When they first got to Omaha they rented a simple 2 bedroom, 1 bath single story home. They chose a home at 5431 Frederick St in Omaha.

Mom, Dad, Mark, Dave and Brian lived here, though they moved shortly before/after Donnie was born.

After the birth of Donnie, our parents bought their first house at 3259 So 74th St in Omaha. It was on NEED THE DATE in a brand-new neighborhood called Westgate that was being built in 1958. As the name implies, that part of town was West Omaha, about 6 miles to the west of the Missouri River. West Omaha today is past 300th street. Over the years three more boys were added along with a needed addition to the house. You can only fit so many kids into bunk beds.

First home. An addition was added with a Master Bedroom, 1/2 bath and a Family Room.

Been there as long as I can remember.

The house was kitty-corner with our grade school and church, St Joan of Arc.

It too was brand spanking new. Our mom worked at the school, part to get a tuition cut, part to make some money but I suspect mostly to keep an eye on us. All the boys were “Alter Boys” at one time or another and the younger four (since we are so close in age) would often do weddings or funerals together.

St Joan of Arc and the Westgate neighborhood were central to all of our upbringings. St Joan of Arc was:

• • The school where we were educated from 1st to 8th grade
  • The place where each of us made all of our early friends
  • The church where some of us were Baptized
  • The church where all of us, but Mark, received our First Communion
  • The church where all of us were Confirmed
  • The place where we had so many regular events
    • Sunday morning pancake breakfast
    • Summer carnival
    • BBQ and spaghetti dinners and potlucks
  • The closest place for pickup basketball games
  • Where we had track practice
  • The place to meet up with friends

It was also the best place to set off fireworks

I remember many nights around the 4th of July where the four youngest of us and our friends would have “Roman Candle” fights with teams facing off at opposite ends of the St Joan of Arc parking lot. A twist would be with “Bottle Rockets” and gutter downspouts used as launchers. Nighttime was the best time for the flash of explosions and bright colors, but also for your own survival since you could see the crap coming at you. You had a way better chance of avoiding getting hit. It’s funny, today you could never do this, and I’d be one of the first to yell at my kids “Are you crazy?”

Like the church, Westgate neighborhood played a big role in all of our lives. SO many large families that lived all around us. The Dworak’s, Zuerlein’s, Peitzmeier’s, Schmidt’s, Dougherty’s, Novacek’s and many more.

Like most families, these friendships were where the dads had their poker nights and the parents had their Bowling Teams and Elks Club memberships. The mom’s were always watching or feeding kids that had different last names then their own and clearly numbered more than they gave birth to. And since they all had large families where many mom’s must have been pregnant together, there were so many sets of kids that went to grade school and high school together. Kids would leave their house after breakfast and not return until dinner, maybe. You just didn’t worry back then.

We also had a ton of BBQs, great food with a variety of ethnic flavors.

One of the most looked forward to events was an almost annual neighborhood vacation trip to Minnesota. We’d usually take over an entire “small” lake resort for a week of fishing, swimming, BBQ-ing, playing board games, volleyball and baseball. Some of the older kids might have had the opportunity to start and end a vacation romance. It was usually Wil-O-Wood Resort on Rush Lake on Ottertail County in Minnesota.

We spent a “lot” of time catching animals like frogs and snakes. And unfortunately, leeches. While the kids were swimming the parents would sit at the picnic tables drinking a beer, eating, chatting and watching the kids. Some of the parents smoked, though my mom did not. My dad would usually light up a cigar. When the kids came out of the water, there would always be a “leech” check. If you had one, a parent would hold the leech by the butt and stick a lit cigarette by its head and the leech would let go in a flash. It was usually more than a handful to get off.

The fishing at Rush Lake was fantastic. We’d usually fish for Walleye or Northern Pike. Both were caught using a “trolling” method which means the boat is moving slightly by using the motor so that the lure would keep moving as if it was a swimming fish. Both were great tasting fish. The Northern Pike was a BIG, mean looking and nasty fish to catch with lots of sharp teeth. It looked very prehistoric. I remember many mornings eating scrambled eggs and fish.

Sometimes we’d go to another nearby lake and rent to pontoon boat for a slower paced “bobber” based fishing. We usually caught dozens of smaller fish. Hard to clean but still tasty.One thing that REALLY sticks in my head was rowing out on the lake at night. It would be SO calm and peaceful. You could see so many stars, but you could also see the whole Milky Way like a bright, wide river winding in the sky. There was never a night where you didn’t see dozens of “shooting stars” (meteors) shooting across the sky. You could sometimes even hear them as they burned up.

The other type of vacation was one we took every 4-5 years. It took time to save up the money to go on these and a lot more planning in the days before the internet. You actually had to use a phone to call a Hotel or Motel and make reservations. And use an actual paper map of the state you were driving through to find your way. Imagine that? Very ancient.

I specifically remember 3 of these vacations. Some with all of us and others with just the 4 youngest brothers.

A vacation to visit the Smith’s in West Virginia with Bessie Cernik in 1966.

1. The first one I remember was back in 1966 when I was 8 years old. It was over the 4th of July. We first went to West Virginia to see my dad’s family. We brought along my mom’s mom, grandma Bessie. We made our way down to see our Uncle Ray (Bessie’s son and my mom’s brother) and his family. Ray worked for General Electric working on the Apollo space program. The highlight was getting to see the launch of he Apollo AS-203 mission launching from Cape Canaveral, which was an uncrewed test of the vehicle’s second stage. It was awesome.

2. The second one was sometime around 1970. We went to Akron Ohio to visit by Dad’s brother Aubrey “Sam”, a WWII Navy veteran and his wife. We then went on to West Virginia again and finally back to Florida. This time to visit Uncle Gene -my dad’s other brother- and his family there. I remember how cool it was that they had a swimming pool in their back yard and how hot, muggy and rainy it was every day. Though the rainstorms were short. Jimmy still complains about traveling all that way facing backwards in the station wagon back seats.

3. The last of these trips was in the summer of 1974, my Freshman year in high school. Dave had gotten married and joined the Navy. He was stationed at Moffett Naval Air Station. He flew on Navy P-3 anti-submarine planes and was there from March 1972 until January 1976. On our way to California, we went passed by the Grand Canyon. I remember buying a short sword at a highway gift shop and using it to dig up a small cactus that I took back to Omaha to plant. It didn’t make it, though. We visited San Francisco and Dave had a Fiat that we were in when he was going up a steep San Francisco street and burned the transmission out. Smoke everywhere.

The other “memorable” stop on this trip was visiting the beach at Capitola in Santa Cruz. There we were when a young woman, probably in her twenties, runs up out of the water and stops in front of us. She then proceeds to take her bikini top off to then lay down and sunbathe. Brian’s eyes were as big as a saucer (I’m sure mine were too, but I couldn’t see them). I think he left his eyeballs there on the beach.

All and all our vacations were great family bonding trips between each other and other families we went with. We were very lucky to have had the opportunity to see so much of America without flying.

Growing up with 5 brothers makes alone time with either parent a challenge. Our dad worked at IBM as a “Field Service Technician” working mostly on mainframe computers for customers like Union Pacific Railroad, Mutual of Omaha and Strategic Air Command (Air Force base outside of Omaha). He really never had to travel since all his customers were both really BIG but also local. Our parents had made the decision to not move the family around, which IBM is known for “I’ve Been Moved,” but it did mean giving up on some career advancement.

Our dad LOVES sports to this day and evidently was quite good in his youth. Having 6 boys really fed into that love. He would come to every game or sporting event that he could from early grade school to college. I really don’t remember him missing a game since he rarely was out of town.

He was the “quiet type” of father. He did a lot of reading and pipe smoking on his lazy boy after work and/or dinner. And our mom loved to play the “wait until your father gets home” card on us all the time. Though it seldom led to any sort of drama. It was just the fear of getting yelled at or an occasional rap on the butt.

He taught me how to fish, catch a ball and swing a bat (though older brothers filled in the gaps) and would play football with us until we got too big, and he got too injured too often.

And he was always quite the joke and storyteller.

• • “He couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the heal.”
  • “If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance then baffle them with your bull shit”.
  • “If you put his brain on the edge of a razor blade, it would look like a pea on a six-lane highway.”
  • “If brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to blow his nose.”
  • “If brains were gasoline, he wouldn’t have enough to power a go-cart around the inside of a Cheerio.”
  • “He was so ugly; the only way to get the family dog to play with him was to tie a pork chop around his face.”
  • “He was so ugly; he has to sneak up on a glass of water to drink it.”

And SO many more.

My mom was the glue and the foundation of our family. Her number one focus were her 6 sons and later her 22 grand kids. Dad came in second.

Mom as a child

Mom at “First Communion” with Frank.

Mom’s High School portrait

Mom as an early married woman.

Growing up my mom was the one we spent most of our time with. She was a stay-at-home mom until the youngest four of us (me included) got into grade school. Then she took a job as a school secretary/administrator at our grade school, St. Joan of Arc. She would later take a job as the secretary/administrator for the Math Department at our High School, Archbishop Ryan High. She was by far the fastest typist I ever saw. I remember her old manual Royal typewriter that had both black and red ink tape. She was thrilled, though it took time to get used to it, when she got an IBM Selectric with the “ball” head. No more jamming and even faster speed.

Like my dad, she loved sports and went to EVERY game or event that I can ever remember. She knew the rules and always let the refs/umps hear it when the “made mistakes.” She was very proud of her sons -whether it was sports, school, a job, a baby- and never passed on an opportunity to brag about them to pretty much everybody. None of the girls we dated were ever good enough for her boys. She was that kind of mom.

Mom with brothers Ray and Frank and a neighbor named Arlene.

Growing up as the only girl on the farm with her two older brothers, she was not afraid of raising 6 boys. She was tough and firm, but never harsh. Though she could play the guilt card extremely well and there was NEVER a time that you were EVER confused about how she felt about something.

Mom, like her mom, was a fantastic cook. Though she was terrible at washing clothes. I can’t tell you how many pink socks -that used to be white- that I had. She was not afraid of getting her hands dirty on the farm or at home or cleaning fish on our Minnesota family vacations. We could not leave the house on Saturdays until we each did our chores, and the house was clean, unless there was a game of course. She spent quite some time at the local doctor’s offices and hospitals with all the broken bones, injuries and illnesses that 6 sons will produce. She used to joke that “the hospital was going to name a ward after our family” because she was there so often with one kid or another. I remember when one of us got sick, she wouldn’t separate them from the herd. She wanted the WHOLE herd to catch it and get it over with.

Growing up in a neighborhood with SO many other large Catholic families, there were always other kids at that house. As was custom, you fed them too just like they were your kids. Kids would be running in and out of the house and she would yell “what do you guys think this is, Grand Central Station?” Many times, she would ask us what we wanted for dinner, and we’d say “whatever,” she’d reply, “OK then, we’re having shit on a shingle.”

When we were out on the farm or in the neighborhood, she we just let us loose and tell us to be home for dinner. A lot of times we’d be at St. Joan of Arc playing. It was just two houses away and across the street. We’d hear her yell, or my dad would whistle, to come home for dinner and we’d run on over.

She was a very good athlete too. A very good bowler like my dad and they won many league championships together. She was also a good golfer.

My mom died of cancer at 70 years 6 months 11 days. She was taken far too soon, and we all miss her, as do the grand kids. They were the apple of her eye.

From the front on 60th street in Omaha. I hit a tree with my dad’s car, in the snow trying to slalom between the tress on the left.

Lots of lockers and great memories.

A new Catholic High School opened up a little more than a mile away from our house. The five youngest boys, starting with Dave, went there. It was called Archbishop Ryan High School, opened on September 2, 1958, to 290 freshmen. Mark went to Westside, a public high school. Dave graduated in 1971, Brian in 1976, Donnie in 1977, Dale in 1978 and Jimmy in 1980.

Oh, and our mom followed us from the grade school and worked as the Math Department administrator. For a while there, we kind of ruled the high school.

Sign at the Entrance from L St onto the campus.

By the time the younger four went there, Ryan had changed to a very progressive school. Many nuns did not wear habits or other nun stuff (except maybe a cross) and there were few scheduled classes.

Each class had a Learning Activity Plan (LAP) which was a complete syllabus that included all the reading material. You went at your own pace, could spend an entire day working on just one subject and scheduled your tests when ready. It was a “sink or swim”, time management environment. I loved it.

Ryan High was torn down in 2019 to make way for another high school. The stone and some bricks and of the basketball flooring were saved.

The only downside from my perspective was that I had no clue how to take notes at a lecture when I went away to college, since we never had any in high school.

Sports were a BIG part of the family. Dad did some coaching, but he and mom mostly did a LOT of driving, watching and supporting. And raising money for the various sports fund-raising campaigns. Most of us played football.

Dave and Jimmy were both All-State football players at Ryan High. Most of us played baseball, with those two again All-State baseball players (there’s a pattern here). They both played basketball on Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) teams and at Ryan High.

Dale was primarily a Football guy, he liked hitting people.

Brian liked his cars and making money to spend on his cars and sound system (wrench monkey and gear head.)

Donnie did the football and baseball thing but also wrestled from 6th grade through early college at University of Nebraska Lincoln (Go Huskers) and ran some track in grade school and high school. He may or may not have been President of the Letterman’s club, Captain of the Football team, Captain of the Wrestling team and Homecoming King. But again, that’s only a rumor. 😉

We always had your typical family cars depending on the year and number of kids. We had Buicks and Fords and American Motors Corporation (AMC) cars. We had 2 doors, 4 doors and 5 doors.

AMC Nash Metropolitan

AMC Rambler

Ford Mustang convertible

My dad had a pink AMC Nash Metropolitan like the one here. That was the car that I (Donnie) smashed with a baseball bat. More on that on my Story Page.

He also bought an AMC Rambler that he bought from his two brother-in-laws, Ray and Frank, from their car dealership Victory Motors in Fremont Nebraska.

But one out of the ordinary cars that my dad DID buy was a Cherry Red, 1966 convertible Mustang. We used to go to baseball practice and games in it and trips around town. It clearly was not a “let’s take the kids to Rush Lake in Minnesota for our summer vacation” kind of a car. But it was cool and a lot of fun.

My dad said he always regretted selling that car. Of course, that was after it went up in value with collectors.

Chevy Nova just like the one we had

Another car that played a big role for the four younger boys was a green Chevy Nova. This was the “shared” car that we fought over. As each of us got out licenses, demand to use the car increased. Brian eventually bought his own vehicle(s), go to his story to here for more.

And then there was the ubiquitous Station Wagon. These were the types, both a Ford and a Buick, where there were seats in the back. One had bench seats that faced each other and the other had the bench seat facing the back.

Rear facing station wagon

Side facing bench seating station wagon

Though not the safest arrangement as we think about it now, but it was fun to travel that way. The kids, mostly the youngest four, had their section in the back where we didn’t annoy our parents too much. With the rear facing one, we had a prime location to visually harass the cars driving behind us. Boys will be boys.

The side-facing one was interesting. You had to stare at a brother the entire trip. We’d play games and fight and then get yelled at.

Trendwood house at 1341 So 133rd St in Omaha

It was in late 1973 when my parents wanted their Dream Home with more space for themselves and the kids. And I believe my parents, wanted a place that the “future” grandkids would have a place to come to for the holidays and stay over. Much like the role the farm and farmhouse had played for the family for so many years.

The original land was the entire 160-acre square. The remaining part is the top half with the blue pin.

Satellite view of Trendwood house next to Trendwood Park

Marie and Don Smith 1973 Sale of Center Township Section 36 South 1/2 of SE 1/4

My dad recently told me how “No bank would loan us $20K to help pay for the building of this new home,” so they had no choice but to sell 80 acres, or half of the farmland that mom got from great-grandma Vybiral. Still pisses him off and that land is worth a LOT more now both in dollars and sentimentally. At least the other half remains in the family.

Both Mark and Dave had moved out by the time we moved into the house in Trendwood in the summer of 1974. Dave was in the Navy and had married Susan Luree Marchese in 1973. Mark had already graduated from the University of Nebraska Omaha and was engaged to be married to Susan Marie Greene.

The Trendwood home was really the home where the four youngest boys to grew up during their High School years. The house was on 133rd street and Ryan High was on 60th street. So, it was about a 6–7-mile trek to and back. Getting to school was easy since our mom worked at Ryan as the secretary/administrator for the Math department. Later we had a shared Chevy Nova to use, and Brian bought his first vehicle as soon as he could (a Ford Bronco I believe). With sports keeping some of us at school late for practice, it involved catching rides home with other classmates when possible. I had a friend in the neighborhood who was on all the same teams as me.

NEED PHOTOS OF HOUSE INSIDE

The four younger boys made lots of neighborhood friends and we often got a lot of us together causing a bit of mischief. Wasn’t a gang per se’, but at least a posse.

Adding to this was Big Fred’s Pizza, an Omaha landmark that opened in 1953. Dale started working there in high school and I -Donnie- started a year later. Over the years several of the next generation of Smith boys also worked there. We made a LOT of friends there too. Fred and Rose were great bosses, if not a bit tough. They were very flexible and generous. They knew we were in sports, and we could easily work around those and other high school events. Prom my Senior year, when Dale was a Junior, was made even more special when Rose loaned me her Red and White Cadillac with the personalized license plate and Fred loaned his to Dale for the evening. Each summer when I came back from college, they would give me my job back in the evenings making pizza. I could also work over the holidays to make more money for college.

Two “incidents/hobbies” that bring a chuckle if not a bit of embarrassment, were moments of “boys will be boys” along with “if someone did this to me now, I’d be SO pissed now”.

The first was “kabonging” or the modified “kabooming.” Kids back then really hated the US Postal Service, or at least it seemed that way because mailboxes on the side of the street were in constant open season. In kabonging someone would drive the car down a neighborhood street late at night and close to the curb. Someone else, usually we’d take turns with 4-5 of us in the car, would hang out the window with a baseball bat and “kabong” each mailbox as you drove by. Sometimes the metal ones would severely dent while the wooden ones would shatter. Sometimes the mailbox had been re-enforced and you’d get a nasty stinger reverberating back up the bat into your arms. My dad got so fed up with others doing it -you would never kabong your own house- that he built a metal rebar cage around it to deter “kabongers.” One time someone had the bright idea to slowly back over a mailbox that was on top of a wood, 4×4 post. Once we had the post out of the ground, we hung it out the window against the door frame and several of us hung on to it from inside the car. The driver would fly down the street and we mowed down the mailboxes like wheat. We were lucky none of them had been re-enforced.

A modified, more dangerous and more expensive version was just plain blowing them up with M80’s, “Kabooming.”

The other mischievous incident was what became known as “shopping cart jousting” or “look at who you are punching BEFORE you punch them”. We were in a large parking lot of some store and there were of course some shopping carts outside. There were 6-10 of us in two cars and we may or may not have been drinking. Someone in each car would hang out the widow and grab a shopping cart. The cars would start at opposite ends of the parking lot and race towards each other. At just the right moment, you would release your cart and attempt to smash the other cart head on, jousting. After a bit we noticed another car or two of guys and one thing led to another and the next thing you know we’re fighting. After less than a minute, one of their guys, who had one of our guys in a headlock, looked at him and said “Tom, is that you?” We all stopped and had a good laugh and hung out the rest of the evening.

Note to self, “take a look at the face you have in a head lock BEFORE you punch it.”

I moved to Lincoln for college at University of Nebraska Lincoln in 1977 but came home every summer to work my two jobs to pay for the next year. This continued until 1981 when I married and lived in Lincoln until I graduated.

Brian moved out in 1977 and got married to Kathy Jean Ericksen in 1979.

Dale went to University of Nebraska Omaha studying Criminal Justice and lived at home until graduation and marrying Sharon Katherine Fast. He moved out at that time and joined the Air Force as an Officer.

Jimmy went to Northwest Missouri State University, playing football and studying pre-Med. He came home every summer to work until graduating and marrying Gleeanne Kay Gude.