Rolland Max Smith

Smith’s students included former Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, who took seriously his teacher’s advice to get involved in politics and work for justice and equality. They also included Katie Couric, who went on to become a network television anchor and a longtime host of NBC’s Today show, and Gen. Charles Roadman, Surgeon General of the U.S. Air Force. They also included thousands of others for whom Smith brought to life lessons about how society governs itself.

Rolland Max Smith was born on Sept. 10, 1931, on an oil lease near Florence, Kansas. He was the youngest of three children of James and Sadie Smith. At age 13, his family moved to El Dorado, where his father and uncle ran a gas station. There, he graduated from high school and went off to college at the University of Kansas, majoring in Education. Then came a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, where he was stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington state and worked on Gen. Paul Freeman’s staff.

After the Army he pursued graduate study at K.U., then was persuaded by a visiting recruiter to move to Arlington, Virginia, to teach high school government. At Washington-Lee High School, he met Jean Fisher, who had just been recruited to teach Spanish there, coming from Wilmington, N.C., via East Carolina University.

They married in 1960, after which he transferred to the newly opened Yorktown High School, where he thought his progressive views would be a better fit. He stayed for the next 30 years, leaving a legacy among his students.

After son Stephen was born in 1961, Smith added to his workload so that Jean could be a stay-at-home mother. He worked nights as a salesman at a Woodward & Lothrop department store. He worked a late shift at a Fairfax County recreation center. He coached soccer and the girls’ softball team at Yorktown, and taught summer school. At the same time, he completed his M.A. degree in government at The American University.

Wellstone was perhaps Smith’s most famous pupil, who later moved to Minnesota and became its U.S. Senator and a firebrand liberal. “Paul used to tell people that I made him a liberal,” Max once told a Washington Post columnist. “But all I was trying to do was give the kids an opportunity to become active in politics.” He added, “I encouraged them to take stands, while tolerating the opinions of others.” The election of his protégé was a proud moment for Smith, and Wellstone’s death in a plane crash in 2002 was a blow.

Another Post article, in 1964, features a picture of Smith in his classroom. In a suit and tie and perched atop the back of his desk chair, his feet on the seat, he gestures and smiles while turning the Goldwater vs. Johnson presidential election campaign into a teachable moment. He pushed his classes to debate and get involved. They adorned themselves with campaign buttons. One student recalls him excusing them from class in 1980 to go and protest at the Iranian Embassy during a diplomatic standoff over Iran’s holding of 52 Americans as hostages.

Others whom Smith taught wound up in senior government jobs – aides in presidential administrations from Lyndon Johnson and his successors as well as other elected officials, and top diplomats at the State Department. When Katie Couric needed a standout teacher to interview for an education piece on NBC’s Today show, she flew from New York to interview Max, her government teacher, at Yorktown.

Smith made a difference in student’s lives, including helping those struggling personally or academically. On social media, his students describe him as demanding, entertaining, creative and funny. “I loved it when he would step into the trash can to get our attention!” one posted on Yorktown’s alumni Facebook page. Another wrote that he was “an outstanding educator with a wickedly dry humor, understanding and patient when needed, and a true gentleman … I am so very grateful I got to call him ‘Teacher’.”