Janie Francis Smith, a child of the great depression and a member of America's Greatest Generation, Janie Francis Smith ended her remarkable life just 24 days short of her 98th birthday on May 10 ^th . She was born in Brownfield, Texas in 1924 to a father, Oscar Covey, a self-employed carpenter and sometimes truck driver and a mother, Lucy Yates, a stay-at-home mother, and part time "gig" worker who helped her husband make ends meet by "taking in" laundry and working part time at various low wage jobs.  Janie was five years old on Black Friday when the stock market crashed and kicked off the Great Depression and she was eleven years old at the height of the dust bowl days in Texas and traveled with her family from Texas to Oregon and everywhere in between as they searched for work.  She ended up in North Hollywood, California where she finished high school in the early days of World War Two.

She met her husband, Glenn Olin Smith while she was still in high school, working for him at one of his Fourth of July Fireworks Stands in the Los Angeles area.  She traveled with her future father-in-law, Burritt Smith, to Grenada, Mississippi where Glenn was stationed, and there on March 24 ^th , 1944, just before Glenn shipped out to the European Theater of War, they were married.  When Glenn returned from the war, they lived in a tiny apartment above a garage near Glendale, California where among other entrepreneurial pursuits they raised Siamese Cats, manufactured fireworks, prospected for uranium and began speculating in real estate while starting their small family.  Janie's son, Steven was born in 1948 and teethed on some of the fireworks at their garage apartment.

They purchased a small home in the Hollywood Hills area and Janie's daughter, Bonnie, was born in 1953 as she and Glenn continued in the real estate business acquiring, subdividing, and constructing several residential developments in Los Angeles County, eventually purchasing a fifty-unit motel across the street from Disneyland.  They purchased a vacant lot not far from their modest home and Janie designed her "dream home" with a spectacular view of the San Fernando Valley.  Janie was a Cub Scout Den Mother for Steven, a Campfire Girl Leader for Bonnie and President of her children's Elementary School Parent Teachers Organization.  She helped organize a lady's social club in her Hollywood Hills neighborhood called the Hills Bells.

When Janie's father died, she invited her mother to join her young family where they teamed up to run the household, raise the children and freed Janie to become even more active in the motel business.  She and Glenn spent long days and many overnight stays at their Orange County motel at Disneyland and acquired a second motel near the Los Angeles International Airport.  They eventually designed and built a third motel located in the Industrial city of Compton, California, that included a bar and restaurant.  This was one of the busiest times of Janie's business career, operating with her husband a bar, a restaurant and three widely scattered motels in the greater Los Angeles area while raising two children in the Hollywood Hills.

Janie & Glenn enjoyed many automobile trips around the United States and during one of these trips they fell in love with the natural beauty and the relative low cost of real estate in Arkansas.  Their mutual love of travel, their unconventional lifestyle with Janie's mother helping run the household and being self-employed, allowed them to travel extensively around the world on numerous trips, some of which lasted as long as three months. With their son off at college and their daughter finished with high school, they "retired" in 1970, when Janie was 46 years old, to a cattle ranch north of Atkins near the small town of Oak Grove, Arkansas.

They raised cows and added a turkey barn, living a life completely different from everything they had experienced growing up in Southern California's urban culture and living in the densely packed residential area of Hollywood.  They gathered eggs for breakfast, attended the local Free Will Baptist Church and went to Deer Camp with their neighbors in the fall.  It was another life.  Years later they moved into a large home on a hillside overlooking Lake Dardanelle, the highway 64 causeway leading to London and the City of Russellville.

Janie helped organize the Hoe & Hope Garden Club in Russellville and she often entered flower arrangements in the Arkansas State Garden Show competition.  She cared for her aging mother in her home and her children brought her grandchildren.   She became a big part of her grandchildren's lives.

When her husband died in 1994, Janie was 70 years old but looked 20 years younger, a snazzy dresser and often proclaimed that she believed in regular exercise and low-calorie diets.  She reinvented her life again, designing and building a small duplex near the Millard Henry Clinic where she threw herself into an active life, and continued to travel widely with her grandchildren or friends.

In her new life she eventually fell in love with a widowed friend, Richard Perkins, whose wife Gloria was a close friend of Janie's and in younger days the two couples, Richard, and Gloria along with Glenn & Janie would often go out together.  Janie & Richard spent a happy decade together traveling and generally enjoying themselves with friends and family from both his and hers previous marriage.

After Richard's death, Janie continued to stay active and with the help of family, friends and caregivers, she often got outside gardening and attended various activities, concerts, fairs, open houses and an occasional shopping tour around the River Valley and of course she went to her silver sneakers exercise class "religiously"!  As Janie's dementia symptoms increased, she needed more help and after a fall resulting in a broken hip, she moved to the Stonebridge Assisted Living Center near the Pope County Fairgrounds for the last four years of her life where she remained physically active until the worldwide COVID Pandemic isolated her and her physical and mental condition slowly deteriorated.  After a series of falls and infections, she finally succumbed to her illnesses and died on April 16, 2022, at the Baptist Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas.

She is survived by her son, Steven and wife, Danielle Smith of London, and their sons: Tim and wife, Catherine Smith of Lebanon, Tennessee (their children, Eli and Natalie) and Kenny and wife, Amber Smith of Russellville (and their son, Max), Janie's daughter, Bonnie Turner and her husband, Stephen Turner of Fayetteville and their daughters, Amanda and husband Sandy Keith of Stuttgart, Germany (their children, Alice and Merriam) and Adrienne and husband Joey Murphy of Bella Vista, Arkansas (their son, Elijah), & Allison Auldridge of Seattle, Washington.

Janie's family would like to express their thanks to all the wonderful caregivers at Crossroads and StoneBridge who provided her with loving care over the last few years.

A graveside service will be at 2:00 p.m., Friday, April 22, 2022, in Rest Haven Memorial Park in Russellville, under the direction of Shinn Funeral Service of Russellville.

The family will receive friends Friday morning from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., at the funeral home.

Memorials may be made to the Alzheimer's Association, www.alz.org/?form=alz_donate .

Online guestbook and condolences available at www.shinnfuneral.com.