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Frances Marie Smith age 94, of Mitchell, SD died Sunday, May 15, 2022 at Avera Brady Heath and Rehab. Funeral services will be 11:00 AM Monday May 23, 2022 at the Will Funeral Chapel with burial at Graceland Cemetery. Visitation will be from 9:30 AM to 11:00 AM Monday, May 23, 2022 at the Will Funeral Chapel.

Frances was born Jan 3, 1928 in Garden City, Kansas to Adolph and Anna Marie (Mary) Fross.  Her father was a farm-hand who worked for a dollar a day, while her mother was a cook (cast iron stoves) and house keeper. Both Adolph and Mary each had about 12 brothers and sisters each, so hard work was not a stranger. Being born in the era of the depression, once a year Frances got a new pair of shoes on her grandpa's salary. She always had a yen for new shoes, in summer especially.

Later Frances' parents moved to Colorado and she attended Wiley grade and high schools and one year at Lamar Union High where Ed went to school. The boys in grade school soon learned not to shoot marbles with Frances because she cleaned them out. Her prize toys were a quart of big cat's eye shooters and 2 quarts of smaller ones.  Unfortunately Ron and Bev managed to lose most of them!

Frances hung out with Ed's sisters from the Bristol area, while he was working on the Denver R and R and they managed plenty of mischief. Ed joined the Navy in 1944 and they were married in St Louis before he went overseas. Sometime during that period Frances worked in a Denver factory tying fish lures by hand. Maybe that is why she almost always caught the first fish even though she didn't like to eat anything fishy. She was also the better hunter and a crack shot. She would light matchsticks set up out in the yard (22 and BBs) and would wait for her prey on the hunting trips to get the first deer while Ed and the sisters- in- laws husbands wasted their time running around the mountains. Their Rocky Mountain expeditions were family lore.

When Ed returned from the war after Guam they started farming south of his parents' home. Later they moved to the parent's farm and expanded their operation to dairy cows and Frances learned that cans of spilled milk in the car doesn't make for a nice aroma if you go over a railroad track too fast.  After a hail storm wiped them out they moved to town and Ed went to work selling Fords and Frances worked at JC Penny selling shoes and decorating the store windows and mannequins.

They decided to move to SD and were farming and raising sheep north of Plankinton. They arrived one day and 1500 head of Tx black face sheep arrived the next day with no fence on the property. Naturally they had to build fence and herd sheep at the same time and learned the hard way about SD black gumbo land and fence posts.

No running water in the old farm house meant Frances had to haul tanks of drinking water from the spring at the lower end of Lake Wilmarth after collecting it in buckets.  Frances and ED always worked together even though Frances did run over Ed one time.  He fell off the jeep and Frances drove right over him but fortunately he wasn't severely hurt. Ron told Frances  "its okay…he still rolling to get behind that rock, Mom" !!

South Dakota winters proved too much for the old farm house with no central heat so they moved to town in Plankinton where Ed worked for Bud Dodd at first. Then Frances started her management career when they bought and ran the variety store, while Ed started selling little Wheelhorse tractors and then seat cushions for farm equipment traveling on the road.

They decided they could make a better product and started their own company in Plankinton using expanded vinyl and better foam.  After a few years they moved to Mitchell and bought the current property and started building a bigger and better company. Whatever they did it was always a team effort. Ed had two patents for seat design, but Frances was the driving force behind the operations for all that time. She deconstructed seat patterns, made new ones, designed the general wood patterns from which to cut, ordered supplies, trained the help in cutting, sewing and assembling the seats, did the accounting, and still managed to cook, clean and do some fun things. The Christmas nativity set with a barn, hay and full-size figures in the yard brought lots of Christmas traffic every year on the old gravel road around the lake.  She helped out at the Elks decorating the club dining room for many years.  She also moved her mother to Plankinton, SD from Colorado when her dad died and managed to help take care of her because Mary never learned to drive.  Frances also decorated for a lot of friends' showers and weddings and enjoyed it.

After Ed's accident from the bus that fell off the blocks and that destroyed his heart, she kept him alive for 20 years adding specialty diet cooking to her efforts.  All she had to do was read any recipe and could tell you whether it was going to be good, even that smelly oyster chowder and her famous peanut brittle .   All this while still running the company.  Her one indulgence was Saturday trips to get her hair done, hauling her grandson in the motor home to the hair salon and providing him with a little battery operated tv to watch the Saturday cartoons in the summer time when he spent the summer with grandma and grandpa.

For relaxation she liked to mow the yard and wore out a couple of little John Deere lawn tractors. Of   course she replaced the JD set with a more comfortable seat from Smith Mfg!  She usually did her own maintenance but later had to have a little help. One of her final instructions was to make sure the oil got changed and new blades put on the current mower so it was ready to go.

She was a good woman, a kind person and no-nonsense exceptional mother. She always said she had 3 kids, Ron, Bev and "Not-me".  A stubborn streak a mile wide if she wanted to be, but always there when you needed her. Most people never realized she lived her life in constant pain from spinal bone problems because she had a smile and a sense of humor most of the time. She will be missed.

Frances was preceded in death by her husband Edgar J Smith and both her parents and son in law Tom (Clyde) Ferrell. She is survived by son Ronald Smith of Grangeville, Idaho, daughter Beverley Ferrell of Lubbock and grandson Shannon Ferrell, granddaughter in law (Marion Desmarchelier) and great granddaughter Harmony (Granby, Canada). Burial will be in Graceland at Mitchell So Dak.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be directed to your favorite charity, the DAV, or the VFW.