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Lennox Smith combined a strong sense of justice with concern for others. He was good natured and always ready to use his technical skills to help others, which made him ideally suited for his position as customer service manager for Connecticut Natural Gas for more than 30 years.
Smith was born March 11, 1941, and grew up in Port Antonio, a coastal town on the northeast coast of Jamaica, where his father, Lincoln Smith, was a baker and his mother, Vinnette, helped raise their two children. The town was a major port for the banana and coconut trade, but in the 1950s and '60s, the economy was in a decline.
Like his friends, Smith was poor. Tthere were no cars or no washing machines, and he went to school barefoot. He had an added handicap: He was very nearsighted. But for years, no one realized that he needed glasses, and he struggled to keep up in school. Classes were free, although families had to pay for expenses like uniforms.
"He was severely disadvantaged," said Cleve Berry, a childhood friend. "You have to fight your way through without anyone helping you."
High school was out of reach because students needed either tuition money, connections or a strong academic record for higher education, but Smith and Berry had none of those, and they left school at 15.
Their families found the money to have them tutored for the first of three high school equivalency exams. Although Smith passed it, he went no further. Instead, he apprenticed himself to a carpenter and learned to make tables, chairs and go-carts. He spent time with friends who had jobs as plumbers or electricians and learned their trades, and in time, he became able to make or fix just about anything.
Smith and Berry were part of a local singing quartet, the Jiving Youths, who performed doo-wop numbers. One year, they made it to the finals of an islandwide competition, but when they went on stage in Kingston, someone turned off the microphones, fearful that the country boys from Port Antonio might win. The crowd booed, and the group lost, but they later found solace in learning that Bob Marley and the Wailers, soon to become a renowned reggae group, had also lost.
As teens, Smith and his friends used to enjoy swimming from the harbor to a nearby island owned by movie star Erroll Flynn. On the way, they used to stop off at a hotel beach, but one day the manager threw them off, saying they had no right to be there, and threatened them with a gun.
Indignant, Smith decided to fight back.
"He did some research and found out the beach didn't belong to the hotel. It belonged to the people," Berry said. The boys went to court, where they had to pay a fine but established the right of residents to use the beach. "Lennox was again the voice of reason," Berry said.
Smith obtained a job as a salesman with Bata Shoes, was promoted to manager in an adjacent town, sent to a store in Ocho Rios, then transferred back to Port Antonio. But he and his friends had been talking for years about seeking better economic opportunities. They had friends who had emigrated to England, Canada and the United States who were doing well financially, and they decided to leave home.
"Economics drives everything," said Glenn Miller, another friend. Leaving Jamaica meant abandoning their culture, the tropical climate, their families and friends.
"You don't get paid anything for doing easy things," Miller said, and the three friends arrived in the States in 1967.
After a short time in New York, Smith and Miller came to Hartford, where they stayed in a boarding house and looked for work. The Connecticut economy was booming, and Smith found a job at Pratt & Whitney, but he didn't like the night shift. He sold shoes at G. Fox & Co. but soon realized he would make less as a salesman here than he did in Jamaica.
He wanted a job with security and soon began work as a technician at Connecticut Natural Gas, then was promoted to management, where he supervised about 15 service workers. He retired in 2001, after 32 years with the company.
At work, Smith was the person sent in to handle difficult situations. "He just had a way of calming customers down and resolving the problem,'' said Chris Malone, CNG's regional director of operations. "He was just great. A natural."
In Bloomfield, he and his wife, Candy Richards Smith, raised four children. He was the neighborhood go-to person for everything from an electrical crisis to advice on bringing up teenagers. After several episodes of vandalism, Smith organized a block watch, obtained the cooperation of the Bloomfield Police Department and scheduled residents to patrol the streets. They caught the teens causing the problems, and Smith ended up as a mentor to some of them.
"He would bring people together," said Pauline Murray, a neighbor. "Lennie was the glue."
Murray became acquainted with Smith one snowy day when she was out shoveling her driveway. She was pregnant, and Smith was indignant that she hadn't called him.
"He told me that if he ever saw me out there again…," she said, and he instead got to work with his snowblower. Sometime later, Murray's husband was away, and she called him in the middle of the night to say the furnace was broken but that she and the children were fine. Soon the phone rang: It was Smith, demanding to know why she hadn't called him. He rang the bell at 4 a.m. and repaired the boiler.
After retiring, Smith had a small handyman business, where he would use his skills to help others, but was more often found volunteering his time.
Smith loved to visit Jamaica and designed a house there for his family. About five years ago, he adopted the Queen Heights Basic School, a preschool in St. Ann's Parish, near their house. Each year, he would ask friends for donations or hold a fundraiser and take down money, books, toys and basic supplies for the schoolchildren. On his final trip to Jamaica last year, when he was already ill with stomach cancer, he took a suitcase full of school supplies and toys.
"He came from nothing and was so humble," said his grandson Bomani Brown, a senior at Wesleyan University in Middletown. "His drive inspired me."
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