The Oxford Mail appreciation (May 21) of the luminous Val Smith recounts how in 1989, when Andrew Smith, MP, stood down from his Blackbird Leys council seat, his wife “stepped in to fill his shoes”.
It should also be noted that when Andrew Smith was a member of the shadow cabinet and subsequently a minister and cabinet minister, Val Smith frequently took her husband’s MP surgeries, with a generosity of spirit and willingness to help in every and any way possible those who came to her, no matter the scale of what was being asked.
Given that so much of what claims to be public life is dominated by aggressive egos and inhumane corporatism, we as a family know as do so many others that Val Smith embodied a determination and dedication to be of service to others.
She provided action above vague words, and, as such, she was an incomparable example to us all.
As citizens, individually and collectively, she showed that helping your neighbour and being enabled to ask for help is not a simplistic credo but the bedrock of how we form and unite our communities, our regions, our countries, and our world.
That the young Val Miles stopped (and stayed) here in Oxford by accident when she was just 16 was for all Oxonians a stroke of extraordinary fortune which many would have recalled yesterday at the Church of the Holy Family in Blackbird Leys; and the untold number of us who couldn’t be at the Holy Family will also be proclaiming Val Smith’s remarkable and enduring legacy.
A shining light doesn’t begin to describe her ....
BRUCE ROSS-SMITH, SALLY MERCER, HUW, TOM, ELINOR, and GABRIEL PRYCE
Bowness Avenue
Headington
Oxford
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