Jim Smith steps down from Wallace Community Foundation Chair position

Jim Smith of Wallace retired from his position as the chair of the Wallace Community Foundation on Feb. 1.

Smith has been a part of the WCFF since its beginning 23 years ago, along with seven other members who helped start the fund. Smith is the last remaining member of the original seven.

The Foundation recently held a meeting to determine who will replace him as chairman.

Smith grew up in Wallace and thought it was a great way to raise money and give back to the community that he’d been apart of his whole life.

The Nebraska Community Foundation based in Lincoln has around 75 towns in Nebraska active in their foundation at this point, including Wallace for the last 23 years. They have coordinators in each of the towns to do fundraisers for each community.

Initially, they did not have much money for projects and the community, but since he’s been there the fund has raised approximately $325,000.

Originally, the founding board members had a goal to raise one million dollars for the foundation, and each year they get closer to that goal, though they have not reached it yet.

The main purpose of the foundation is to raise money for projects in the community, and they have been able to provide about $60,000-$70,000 over the years.

“The foundation has been a really good thing for a lot of small communities,” Smith said. “I’ve received a lot of good ideas through the other local foundations, like Grant and Imperial.”

Smith has played many roles within the Wallace Community Foundation Fund, including chairman, treasurer and secretary.

While he has been with the foundation, Smith says they have helped create scholarships for nursing students and teachers with the help of a donor, donated a defibrillator to the fire department through a fundraising event, helped purchase playground equipment for the school, provided air conditioning and new tables and chairs for a local building and has donated to the Wallace Fall Festival each year.

They have also donated $10,000 for a restroom at the city park, gave around $7,800 toward painting the community hall, provided $9,000 to the senior center to help upgrade some safety concerns and donated a scoreboard and uniforms to the school and ballpark.

“People sometimes wonder what their money will help with if they donate to the foundation,” Smith said. “I like to tell them a little personal story about my parents.”

When Smith’s parents passed away, they had about $3,000-$4,000 in a memorial fund. Smith suggested to his siblings that they donate to the WCFF.

With the method that funds are distributed within the foundation, that memorial fund has helped with every project they’ve done for the last ten years and will continue to help in the years to come.

Smith has owned his business, Smith Financial Services, for nearly 45 years, and plans to work part time at that business and as an independent crop adjuster for a while longer before fully retiring from those businesses. He also still owns his antique shop in Wallace, which is where his passion in retirement lies.

“Once antiquing gets in your blood it’s hard to get rid of,” Smith said.

Last year, he and his wife purchased a camper and plan to travel across the United States, with Arizona and Texas currently on their destination list.

They already travel quite a bit for antiquing and have been all over the world. Besides antiquing, they make a point to visit presidential libraries, and they’ve managed to visit 14 so far.

Three and a half years ago, Smith and his wife had quite the vacation where they traveled to Hoover’s library in Iowa, Ford’s library in Michigan, and Roosevelt’s library in New York.

They then traveled from New York City to the innauguration, since alongside antiquing, Smith also holds a passion for politics.

Smith plans to continue vacations such as this in his future, focusing on presidential libraries and antiquing.

He will continue to be available to the Foundation if they ever need any help from him, but he will focus on his part-time work, his travels and his love of antiquing for now.