Rick Smith:
CLASS OF 1963
Vista High SchoolClass of 1963
Vista, CA
Rick's Story
After graduating from VHS I spent 4 great years at UCLA, where I roomed with Bob Abbott (VHS class of '64) for two of those years. Also saw Dave Toth and Chere Miller (she married Bob) there frequently, Janet Powell a few times, and Steve Hancher for a short time. Loved the basketball--saw 3 NCAA championships during that time, including Kareem Jabbar (who was Lew Alcindor back then).
Majored in accounting but felt led to follow in my father's footsteps (remember him as pastor of Vista Community Church?) and went on to seminary in Dallas, Texas, where I met my sweet little yellow rose of Texas, Gail. We got married in 1970 and are still married today. I spent 22 years working with teenagers at two churches, probably had a chance to influence the lives of well over a thousand kids during that time. First stop was Felton, CA, for four years, then moved to the Quad-Cities, IL, where I have lived since 1976 (moved over to the Iowa side in 1995).
Finished my ministry years with 11 years as a senior pastor, then moved into Education. I have worked for Ashford University in Clinton, IA, for the past seven years and have no plans to retire. My day job is basically investigating grade appeals filed by students, as well as reviewing reports of academic dishonesty and nailing them for plagiarism.
I have three grown children and seven absolutely beautiful grandchildren. My son (our youngest) lives in Minneapolis and has a thriving online business creating motion backgrounds for worship services--if you go to church you may have seen his work, as about 5200 churches subscribe to his service at motionworship.com. I'm sure he got his creativity from his mom. My oldest daughter does so many things ...Expand for more
I don't know where to begin. She lives in San Diego, where her husband also works for Ashford. My other daughter has stayed right here in the Quad-Cities area, and teaches piano, along with home-schooling her kids. Somehow we managed to put all three of them through private colleges, and my oldest also got her Master's.
Basketball was always a huge part of life. I continued to play in UCLA intramurals, Los Angeles City church league, some church leagues in the Dallas TX area, and finally the Quad-Cities. Kept up with them young whippersnappers pretty well, too!, playing competitively into my 50's, and finally playing my last full-court game on my 60th birthday. Wish I could have improved more while in high school (most of it came during college years), I could have helped the team more, maybe won that second CIF championship.
These days it's pretty much just golf, though I played a lot of tennis over the years, too.
Update on July 12, 2023
I retired from full-time work at Ashford University in 2016 but continue to teach online--the school was bought out by the U. of Arizona so that's who I teach for now.
Right after retiring my wife and I traveled to Europe, spending 9 days each in London and Paris. We still hope to go to Alaska and Hawaii some day. We had big plans to celebrate our 50th Anniversary in July of 2020 with all our family but Covid struck down our plans and we never got to do it. We did get all our kids and grandkids together this past Christmas, 3 kids and 7 grandkids--one new one since the last time I wrote, but we also lost one in an accident in 2022.
I love working with the children these days at the church in Moline, IL, where I was the youth pastor for 18 years.
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