Author discovers heritage in story of her father
In 1950, a woman named Victoria jumped to her death from the top of the Security Bank Building in Fresno. For decades now her granddaughter, Vickie Smith Odabashian (after whom she is named), has been piecing together her story and that of her husband, Smitty, and their son Jackie Smith (Vickie’s dad) and in so doing discovering her Armenian heritage kept hidden by Victoria’s family.
Her dad reminded her of the fictional Andy Taylor of Mayberry, played by Andy Griffith: “Each was a lawman with uniforms similar in color and design, and both had a laid-back persona and a small-town approach to life.” He worked in the Butte County Sheriff’s Office, including as a detective and in search-and-rescue; some of his colleagues called him “Gentleman Jack.”
But there is more to Jack’s story, and until his death in 2012 he helped fill the gaps in what Vickie knew about her dad, including his traumatic childhood. Now the question can be answered: “What Became Of Little Jackie Smith?: A True Story Continued” ($15 in paperback from the Victoria Lazarian Heritage Association, available locally at the Cornucopia restaurant in Oroville; also for Amazon Kindle.)
Each chapter begins with “Little Jackie Smith Became …” followed by such titles as “An Astute Lawman”; “A Man of Principle”; and “Well-traveled.”
Something of an Oroville-based Forrest Gump figure, he met Ronald Reagan during the dedication of the Oroville Dam. Later in life, stepping away from local law enforcement, he became a Cleared American Guard after working in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska during the Exxon Valdez disaster. He was assigned to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, helping to protect the U.S. embassy there and then moved on to Moscow.
Vickie writes that reflecting on her dad’s memorabilia, kept in his old Samsonite suitcase, “I realized that Little Jackie was not entirely left in childhood. … I noticed it in the softening tone of my dad’s voice in the mid1990s when he first shared stories of his childhood with me for my college class assignment.”
This is a quiet homage to a good man with a wide grin who faced so many challenges one could write a book about them.