Hilda Sue Trapp Smith, 79, died peacefully at home on September 29, 2023, surrounded by her husband and daughters. Hilda was a scholar and a beauty queen, who loved the arts, literature, travel, fashion, interiors and architecture, the Founding Fathers, our Constitution, the outcasts and forgotten, God, Jesus, and Emily Post.
Hilda was born in Russellville, Alabama, on July 23, 1944, as Allied troops were making advances on the Continent against German forces and Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced he would be seeking an unprecedented fourth term in office. Her early life in Trapptown, Alabama, was idyllic in the glow of the post-war era, living just down the lane from her adoring paternal grandparents and in the company of forty-one first cousins. An early scholar, she attended school at Trapptown Elementary and quickly advanced two grades in one grammar school year, her older cousins having already taught her to read and her father having taught her to add and subtract.
She loved to sing. A gifted soprano, as a teenager she formed a gospel quartet called “The Gospelettes” with her good friends. In 1958, when Hilda was only fourteen, the Gospelettes’ entered a gospel quartet competition hosted by the Blackwood Brothers, the most acclaimed gospel quartet in the country at that time, which was held at Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama. The event was broadcast live on the radio in front of a packed house. After a long evening of performances and more than one sing-off, the Gospelettes won the competition, taking home a trophy, the $50 grand prize, and a recording contract to boot. The group later recorded the song that won the competition for them, Swing Low Sweet Chariot.
But Hilda was not just a scholar with an angelic voice, she was also a beauty in her own right. Crowned Miss Franklin County at the County Fair during her senior year of high school, she went on to compete in the Miss Alabama Pageant at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama, in the Spring of 1961, ultimately placing third.
During her high school years when not leading cheers at school sporting events, Hilda became enraptured along with the rest the country with the style and refinement of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy’s love of literature, protocol, and fashion spoke to Hilda’s own passions and set an example she would follow throughout her lifetime. Hilda’s beloved aunt Lillian had taught her to sew when she was a little girl, which talent she employed to emulate the First Lady’s fashions in the halls of Phil Campbell High School. To make extra money to pay for the fabrics for her ever-growing wardrobe, she took a job as a disc jockey at the local radio station, spinning tunes in mornings before school.
After a semester at the new Junior College in Phil Campbell, Hilda enrolled in Florence State Teachers College (now the University of North Alabama) graduating in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science degree in secondary education. For graduate work, she planned to go to law school, although she did not know where or how. To complete her practice teaching, she took a job in Lawrence County teaching English at Hatton High School in 1967. She chaperoned a group of her students on a Grand Tour of Europe in the Summer of 1968, igniting a wanderlust that lasted a lifetime. Less than a week after returning home from Europe, Hilda married the love of her life, Larry Mack Smith, in August 1968.
Law school would have to wait, however, as for the next ten years, she devoted herself to raising her girls, instilling certain values in them that include a love of God and Jesus, the importance of an education, good manners, proper etiquette (her copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette is equally as worn as her Holy Bible), community service, an abiding appreciation for the United States Constitution, and a hallowed awe for our Founding Fathers and their Divine Inspiration.
In the early 1970’s, Hilda and Larry began regularly taking family trips to Colonial Williamsburg, which combined many of her great passions – American History, architecture, interiors design, furniture, home furnishings, gardens, fine dining, and – not to be forgotten – The Pottery Factory, located just outside of Williamsburg, Virginia. When it was all said and done, the family made the trek more than twenty times.
They lived in Birmingham while the girls were young and Larry attended law school. Hilda whiled away the hours raising her daughters, teaching art in the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, sewing beautiful clothing (having already become and extremely accomplished seamstress) and decorating her family home. She had an eye for color, a feel for fabrics, a head for measurements, and an ability to clearly visualize, culminating in an incomparable taste and flair. She also helped Larry study during law school, even through the Bar Exam, which positioned her well to assist him in his law office as paralegal, accountant, office manager, collaborator, and mastermind.
Given her love of politics, her political acumen, her friendliness and her all around ability to get things done, she managed to success the political campaign of a friend seeking local office as the first woman elected countywide. That experience gave her confidence to do the same for Larry when he turned his sights to political office as Circuit Judge for Lauderdale County. With all family and friends’ hands on deck for strategy meetings held over the kitchen table, and endowed with an indomitable will to make things happen, she twice led Larry Mack’s campaign to victory.
Though she enjoyed her work for her devoted husband, she missed the civic work that she had done in Birmingham. She particularly loved her work with a committee for the Birmingham Symphony. As a result, she joined the early Shoals Symphony Board, serving multiple double-rotations on the Board, and ultimately serving as its president for 2005-2006. She was equally as passionate about her work with the Rape Response program, having served on its board for more than 10 years, helping its program to serve as a model for other cities all over Alabama.
She volunteered for Kennedy Douglas Center for the Arts, and together with Beth Lane, hatched a plan to bring a juried art show to the area in 1986. With Hilda as president and Beth as vice-president, they designed the brochures, mailed them to artists far and wide, planned a gala, secured financing for it from a local bank, designed the first poster, and found a credible judge who would come for the cost of transportation. She and Beth hung more than 200 pieces of art in both houses at the Center for that first show. When the time arrived, both the gala and the show were well attended, and the artists seemed pleased. She did not know if a second Arts Alive! would ever happen, but it did and has for the last 35-plus years. It has been a source of tremendous, private pride for her, although she never boasted of her involvement.
One week after she dropped her youngest daughter off at college, Hilda took the LSAT and enrolled in Cumberland School of Law the following year. With Larry’s agreement, she moved to a small apartment in Birmingham that they shared on weekends. During law school, she served as secretary of the Student Bar Association, and competed with the schools’ Trial Advocacy Team and Moot Court Board. In her third year, her trial team won the regional competition in Newport News, Virginia against 12 other law schools, ultimately finishing in the finals of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy competition held in Miami, Florida, and judged by federal judges and trial attorneys.
While in school, she worked 30 hours a week for the criminal defense law firm of Johnson & Cory. She conducted the investigation in support of the defense of Peggy Lowe, who along with her sister, Betty Wilson, was accused of the brutal murder of Mrs. Wilson’s husband. Believing strongly that Peggy was innocent, Hilda worked tirelessly throughout law school, stitching together the defense in Peggy’s case. By the time the case was tried, Hilda was an active member of the defense team, having graduated from law school and passed the Bar in the meantime. In the end, Mrs. Lowe was found innocent of all charges, the jury returning a defense verdict in less than thirty minutes. She later accompanied Mrs. Lowe to California to appear on the Leeza Gibbons Show, and was interviewed by NBC’s Dateline for their multi-part special on the murder and ensuing trial.
While she remained with Johnson & Cory as a litigation specialist, she also maintained a law office in Florence, knowing she would one day work exclusively in Florence. She viewed her career as an attorney as some of the most important of her life’s work, tirelessly advocating for women and society’s outcasts, accused, forgotten, and disbelieved. She was honored to be invited by Gerry Spence (best known for the Silkwood case) to attend his Trial College in DuBois, Wyoming, in the summer of 2000 for a five-week course to enhance her already incomparable courtroom skills. When asked how she could defend people that she knew to be guilty, she responded that the importance of her work was not a question of the guilt or innocence of the accused, but one of ensuring the State proved their case against them and did so following the rules. She further explained that when the State comes for one who is innocent, it will be required to do the same thing, and that our freedoms can only be protected when those who are the least among us receive the same treatment as those with means.
Hilda was preceded in death by her infant daughter, Emiley Ellen, and her parents, T.W. Trapp, Jr. and Ruble Todd Trapp. She is survived by her devoted husband of 55 years, Larry Mack Smith; daughters Leah Smith Tubbs of New Orleans, Samantha Kathryn Smith of Florence, Caroline Smith Gidiere (Stephen) of Birmingham; grandchildren Michael Trapp Tubbs (Mallory) of Sewanee, TN; George Arthur Breaux Tubbs of Nashville, TN; Mathilde Frances deVerges Tubbs of New Orleans; Philip Stephen (Bud) Gidiere, IV and Caroline Louise Baker Gidiere of Birmingham.
The family will receive guests at a celebration of Hilda’s life at their home, 807 Sherrod Avenue on Saturday, November 11, 2023 from 2-4 p.m. Burial will be private at the Florence City Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, and in keeping with her passion for community, the family requests donations be made to Shoals Crisis Center: Rape Response, the Shoals Symphony, the Kennedy-Douglas Arts Center, or to Hospice of North Alabama, to whom the family is deeply grateful for the love, support and tender care they provided to Hilda in her final months.
