Smith Trust Creates New Endowments

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The late Stella Boyle Smith, who died at the age of 100 in 1994, was well known for her love of music and philanthropy. The Stella Boyle Smith Trust, a trust with a longtime history of supporting the arts and music at the University of Arkansas, has made a $200,000 gift to fund student scholarships.

Of the gift, $160,000 will receive matching funds available through the Matching Gift Program to create the Stella Boyle Smith Honors Academy Scholarships with a $320,000 endowment. The remaining $40,000 will be used to create the Stella Boyle Smith Honors College Academy Piano Scholarship Support Endowment for the benefit of a student in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences music department.

G. David Gearhart, vice chancellor for University Advancement, said: “We are most grateful to the Stella Boyle Smith Trust and particularly to the trustees for their leadership and generosity, in supporting areas close to Mrs. Smith’s heart. We believe she’d be most pleased to have her name associated with these scholarships and support endowments that will make such a difference to students and to those with an interest in the musical arts. We also appreciate Mike Mayton, Cathy Mayton and Mackie Hamilton, trustees, for their ongoing interest and relationship with the University of Arkansas.”

Donald R. Bobbitt, dean of Fulbright College, said: “Once again, Fulbright College is enriched through the legacy of Stella Boyle Smith. We will now be able to support more gifted students in the arts, and for that I am most grateful to the trustees.”

Mayton is a 1973 graduate of the Sam M. Walton College of Business and a 1976 graduate of the UA School of Law. He is a trustee of the Stella Boyle Smith Trust and a partner with Rieves, Rubens and Mayton in their Little Rock office. W. P. Hamilton, deceased, a trustee of the Stella Boyle Smith Trust at the time of his death, was also a graduate of the UA School of Law.

Smith was a Little Rock philanthropist and founder of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. The Stella Boyle Smith Trust has made a previous gift to establish the Stella Boyle Smith Music Fund in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, which renamed the Fine Arts Concert Hall for her.

Smith donated more than $2.5 million in her lifetime to organizations in the music and medical fields. Throughout Arkansas she was recognized as a woman of leadership who gave her time and money to help others. The trust has donated more than $5 million since her death.

She was born in Farmington, Mo., into a large, musically inclined family, which moved to Arkansas when she was two. She began singing at the age of three and graduated from high school at 14. In 1922, she moved to Little Rock with her first husband, Dandridge Perry Compton, who died in 1935. Her second husband, George Smith, held various business interests and extensive farms in Woodruff and Arkansas counties, which allowed them to engage in philanthropy. Mr. Smith died in 1946.

In 1923, Smith’s love for music inspired her to start The Musical Group in her living room of her residence at 102 Ridgeway Drive in Little Rock, where she lived until she died. The group became the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in 1966. Her initial objective was to establish the symphony as an educational tool for children, and, in 1968, she helped establish the Youth Orchestra. In 1972, the symphony board of directors named her an honorary life member. Smith established a trust fund for the symphony’s permanent endowment in 1985. A loyal friend of music and the symphony, she attended nearly every performance and most rehearsals.

Smith was also a pianist. In 1988, she gave UALR a grand piano as well as an endowed trust of $500,000. UALR renamed its concert hall the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall as a tribute to her. That year the university also gave her an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Interest from the trust provides scholarships each year for music students studying string instruments, piano or voice.

Smith enabled many students around the state to attend college through the more than 200 scholarships that she financed.

Other organizations that have benefited from her generosity include Accessabilities/Access Academy, Pathfinders, Easter Seals, Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Baptist Health, Hendrix College, University of Central Arkansas, Historical Arkansas Museum and Pulaski Technical College.

This gift counts toward the Campaign for the Twenty-First Century, which recorded $878.5 million in gifts and pledges against the $900 million goal as of Dec. 31, 2004.

It also counts toward the $300 Million Challenge, the campaign-within-a-campaign to raise $300 million for academic purposes to match the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation’s gift of $300 million to the University of Arkansas, stands at $249.5 million, or 83 percent of the total amount to be raised as of Dec. 31, 2005.