Jimmie Carroll Smith, also known as ‘Possum’ and ‘Big Jim’, died peacefully in his own bed on Saturday, July 13, 2024, after a few years of declining heart health. You can forgive his heart for being worn out, however, as it was the engine behind a very big man for over 80 years, and afforded him the chance to live a joyful, loving, and indeed, very BIG life.
Born at the tail end of the “silent generation,” he was the third son of Theodore Smith and Lucille Lyte Smith, born when Lucy was forty years old. As a young mother in Oklahoma during the Great Depression, Lucy had lost her son Perry Joe to scarlet fever, and her son Bill suffered from schizophrenia and the effects of its treatment. When she learned she was pregnant again, Lucy entered a hospital in Dallas so she could lose weight and safely deliver her last child. By the time she was nine months pregnant, she had lost fifty pounds and lil’ Jimmie Carroll was born. He became the light of her life, even more so after his beloved father Theo died in 1957. Big Jim got his humor and joy from his father, and from his mother he inherited his loving heart and, above all, his size.
Since both of his parents were teachers in rural Oklahoma, lil’ Jimmie had few other options than to go to school with them during the day. When he was four, they realized he had done all the work to complete first grade and he was promoted to second. This early start in education meant that he began high school at eleven and college at fifteen – and was always the biggest kid in the class. Being so young and big, and without a father, he said he often felt awkward and lost in school – but he always relied on his oldest friend, George Morrow, for much-needed support.
Eventually lil’ Jimmie began growing into his massive size and became Big Jim when he started at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, OK, in 1960. He served as vice-president of the student body and proudly booked the first gig of the band The Five Americans. He was a participant in the event known as the Great Wapanucka Trainwreck, but his main job in that infamous tall tale was to keep the story told, embellished, and eventually preserved in the StoryCorps records at the Library of Congress. He graduated in 1964 and followed his friend Don “The Bear” Boyce to Hobbs, NM, to teach history. Teaching high school students in rural New Mexico meant that some of his students were actually older than he was. He eventually returned to the Dallas area, taught school for another five years, and met and partied with some of his most cherished friends – Bub Turner, Mike Overton, Rosemarie Allen, Lauren Turner, Lary Walker, Stacy Lackey, and many, many others.
After years of scraping by with teaching, he turned instead to sales and became a self-described “man of the cloth.” Big Jim spent most of his professional career in wholesale fabric sales at Haber Fabrics and Textile Creations. As he described, he cornered the market on double-knit in the 70’s and built a successful business. He channeled his creativity into developing quilting lines like the “Piney Woods Prints,” a visual homage to Spoon River Anthology set in east Texas, and the “Mason-Dixon Line,” which reprinted popular fabric patterns from the Civil War era. But his biggest professional win came after he watched his daughter and her dance team shiver in the stands during a late-season football game. After that came a long line of polar fleece prints covered in footballs, soccer balls, or hockey sticks, created in collaboration with his cherished friend and designer, Diane George. On the day after he died, he received his last commission check for the soccer ball design so as he said, he never retired.
At Christmas in 1970 he met Kathy Blakeney in Atlanta, GA, another traveling salesperson who specialized in fabric notions. They married in 1975 and famously had two weddings with two separate anniversaries – she married him on February 22 alongside her family in Georgia, and he married her on February 23 in Texas surrounded by his family and their mutual friends, including thirteen groomsmen and thirteen bridesmaids. Big Jim and Kathy were not particularly interested in having kids and spent a lot the 1970’s with their friends in Dallas, traveling to Las Vegas or San Francisco, and partying up on Lake Texoma and Lake Grapevine. But a devastating house fire in 1978 scrambled priorities and their daughter, Stacy Carroll, was born exactly nine months after they moved back into their rebuilt home.
When Big Jim became a dad, he did that big, too. When the third graders did particularly well on their standardized test, he showed up in the school cafeteria, made a public announcement of how proud he was, and bought the entire grade ice cream. When a bunch of girls were grumbling about having to practice softball in the Texas heat, he surprised everyone with McDonalds for the whole team. When he saw that the Thanksgiving breakfast at church consisted of muffins and fruit – a meal certainly not big enough for Thanksgiving, at least to him – he decided to cook pancakes and bacon for the whole church, every Thanksgiving morning, for years. When he and Kathy became the “choir parents” for the church youth choir, he made breakfast for them, too. When his daughter brought her college friends to Dallas, he bought them all dinner, and when she brought her sorority sisters to Las Vegas, he got them hotel rooms and gave everyone $20 each to go gambling. When the school or church or theater group or football team needed food for their event, he showed up with BBQ for everybody, and if you needed fabric to cover the stage, make costumes, or decorate the festival, you knew who to call. He was one of the few people who could produce enough food to make even teenage boys in Texas cry, “Big Jim, I’m full!”
Big Jim openly embraced the fun of life. He was a life-long Oklahoma Sooner but also had encyclopedic knowledge of all things sports. As a fabric man he liked looking good and had a fabulous closet of jackets, shoes, jewelry, and hats – including, most notably, his chai, a 1970’s gold medallion with Jewish symbol for life; he wore it every day and said he never felt dressed without it. He loved blues and rock and roll, and taught his daughter to spell the word “M-A-N” through the musical tutelage of Bo Diddley. He was a direct recipient of the benefits of the New Deal so he loved FDR, LBJ, and the Democratic party – when he wasn’t frustrated that “they never learn the lessons of history.” He loved casinos, playing cards, and could get a craps table going better than anyone. With his ever-shifting collection of convertibles from the 1960’s and 70’s, he was a self-described “Cadillac Man.” And long before the term, Big Jim modeled the importance of “chosen family” and made and maintained lifelong friendships. He was the first person up in the morning to make the blackest, strongest coffee you have ever consumed, and he had the biggest laugh, told the best stories, and always made everyone feel at home with him – even if you felt awkward or shy, too small or too big.
Big Jim will be missed and remembered most especially by his wife, Kathy Blakeney Smith; his daughter, Stacy Smith; his brothers-in-law, Roger Blakeney (Pam Blakeney) and Chris Blakeney; his nephews, Matt Blakeney (Kelli Blakeney) and Mark Blakeney (Nikki Blakeney); his grandchildren, Clayton Stone (Roger Viticoski), Molly Gallagher, and Summer Gallagher (Rose Gallagher); his goddaughter, Megan Turner Crowe (Paul Crowe); his nieces and nephews, his “only-child daughters,” and hundreds of friends and colleagues from church, work, and all the big things he did during his life.
A Service of Witness to the Resurrection for Jimmie Carroll Smith will be held on Wednesday, July 24, at 2 PM at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Rome, GA, with visitation at 1 PM. A memorial service will be held in Dallas, TX, on August 23, 2024, and a party and BBQ on August 24. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Westminster Presbyterian Church or Fork, Spoon and Plate, a hunger ministry in west Rome.
“There has never been a human being, alive or dead, who has had a better life than I. There have been multitudes who have probably had as good, but nobody, NOBODY, better than mine. And I believe that.”
Henderson & Sons Funeral Home, Oaknoll Chapel, is honored to serve the family of Mr. Jimmie Carroll Smith.
