By Ana Rodriguez Soto - The Archdiocese of Miami

MIAMI | This is how Maria Leon will remember her friend, Father David Smith: A voracious reader, avid writer, aviation buff, fluent Spanish-speaker, and “amazing” companion to the sick and dying.

Father Smith, who grew up in Miami Springs and felt most at home in neighboring Hialeah, died Oct. 8, 2022, a week shy of his 72nd birthday, of complications from colon and liver cancer.

He had been an archdiocesan priest for 40 years, and spent 20 of those ministering to the sick in hospitals and hospice.

“The priesthood, for him, was his life. After that, the sick,” said Leon, who first met him when she was 18 and he worked at the counter of a now extinct bowling alley in southwest Miami.

They realized it when they met years later at St. Raymond Church in Miami, where he served as administrator and then parochial vicar from 2009 to 2010.

Bowling aside, both were Cursillistas. Father Smith would say he discovered his vocation after making a Cursillo in the mid-1970s. His involvement continued throughout his priesthood. He not only served as the movement’s spiritual director in the Archdiocese of Miami (1988-2002), he also served as spiritual advisor to the national and international Cursillo Movement.

“He was known worldwide,” said Leon, who has been receiving condolences from as near as Mallorca, Spain, where the movement began, to as far as Australia.

“I thought about it first,” said his older brother, Stephen Smith, of the vocation to priesthood. He remembered his brother being an unlikely candidate.

“He was the guy, believe it or not, who like in second grade had the girlfriend, and girls kissing him,” Stephen Smith recalled.

Before entering the seminary, his brother “got out in the real world,” said Smith. He worked as counterman at several bowling alleys and as a  loader for Span East Airlines, where Stephen was his supervisor. After Stephen left the company, David rose to assistant cargo supervisor. He also did stints as a health care orderly and warehouse supervisor.

And long before Spanish became the dominant language in Hialeah, “he was speaking Spanish,” Smith said. “He taught himself. He’d read the Spanish version of the Herald, he would watch everything on TV that was in Spanish. He had a knack for that.”

He was so fluent that he tended to think in Spanish, said Leon. “There came a point when he would have to think before speaking in English. [Spanish] was his second language but he spoke it perfectly, like a native.”

He also learned Latin, taught himself some Greek and Hebrew, and could “get by” in Portuguese and Italian, said his brother.

David Smith was born at Jackson Memorial Hospital on Oct. 15, 1950. The birth was not auspicious, Smith remembered. Hurricane King would hit a few days later, and “the windows blew in [in the hospital room] where my mom was.”

David also was born with kidney cancer.

“They thought he wasn’t going to make it. Then the doctors said it was a miracle. It all cleared up,” said Smith. “It was a miracle we had David that long.”

The Smiths grew up in Blessed Trinity Parish in Miami Springs, where the siblings — brothers Stephen, David and Kevin, and sister Karen — attended the parish school. The boys then went to Archbishop Curley High School, where David was a member of the class of 1968.

Father Smith entered St. John Vianney Seminary in Miami after high school, briefly paused his studies after a year at the major seminary of St. Vincent de Paul in Boynton Beach, then returned in 1977. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Miami on May 15, 1982.

His assignments included: parochial vicar at Epiphany, South Miami (1982-85); parochial vicar at Annunciation, West Park (1985-87); parochial vicar at St. John the Apostle, Hialeah (1987-88 and 2006-09); parochial vicar at St. Lawrence, North Miami Beach (1991) and St. James, North Miami (1991-94); administrator of Sacred Heart, Homestead (1988-91); and administrator and parochial vicar at St. Raymond (2009-10).

From 1994 to 2006 he served as chaplain at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. He also served two months as chaplain at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, with residence at St. Maurice in Dania Beach (now St. Maurice at Resurrection). From 2010 until his retirement in October 2018, he served as chaplain at Catholic Hospice.

“I think his greatest gift was with the sick,” said Leon. “He had such devotion to the sick it was incredible. He spent hours with them, talking to them, praying, talking to them about God. At whatever time they called, he would go anoint them. He never said no.”

She remembered one time he even flew out to anoint a former parishioner who lived in another state, and returned in time to celebrate Mass at the parish the next morning.

“He was amazing,” Leon said, adding that he also was beloved by parishioners of San Lazaro in Hialeah, where he resided while serving at Catholic Hospice. He continued serving there after retirement, stopping only at the start of the pandemic. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with cancer.

San Lazaro is where his funeral will take place on what would have been his birthday, this Saturday, Oct. 15. The viewing will begin at 9 a.m. followed by the funeral Mass at 10 a.m. San Lazaro is located at 4400 W. 18 Ave., Hialeah. Burial will follow at Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery in Doral.

Father Smith was predeceased by his sister, Karen, and is survived by his brothers, Stephen who lives in Smyrna Beach, and Kevin who lives in Miami Springs; as well as a niece and nephew, Stephanie and Ryan, and a recently born grandnephew, Nikolas.