I’m uncertain who in particular to thank regarding the renaming of Rotan Street in East Waco to DeShong Smith Street. Nevertheless, I’m certain my family and several former members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church are overwhelmingly grateful for the honor, approved by the Waco City Council on Dec. 15.

DeShong Smith

To look up and see a stretch of road named after him is an honor for a man who served all in our community.

The Rev. Smith is dead now. But when he lived he was a kindly gentleman known throughout the East Waco community. From Elm Avenue to Faulkner Lane, from Clifton Street to Garrison Street, to many, he was lovingly referred to as Rev. DeShong.

He served as pastor of the East Waco Cumberland Presbyterian Church for 35 years. The church is still located at the corner of Rotan and Edgeway Avenue, near where the new street sign is erected. It remains a lasting symbol of faith, hope and abiding love in our community.

Smith served as a strong voice and loyal advocate to many disenfranchised residents for many years.

His wife, Cleopatra Adella Evans Smith, was a favorite teacher for many years in the Waco Unified School District. (The district was later renamed the Waco Independent School District.) She was my eighth-grade teacher at the original A.J. Moore High School, and our families were neighbors and consummate lifelong friends.

At the passing of my father, the Rev. G.W. Jefferson, Rev. DeShong was an active participant in the funeral services. He provided comforting words of encouragement and showed compassion to my family.

Rev. DeShong was born on Dec. 4, 1906 in Harrison Switch, about four miles outside Waco. As a youth, he endured segregation and racism and he readily spoke of it in a 1987 Tribune-Herald article. At the time, he was 81 years old and recalled what he described as “spotty schooling” and being banned from several then-white Waco businesses. Yet he remained upbeat and proud of Waco and he told the Trib, “I have no grumblings about society . . . Society is always getting better.”

Rotan Street in East Waco was renamed in honor of the Rev. DeShong Smith, who served as pastor of Cumberland Presbyterian Church for 35 years.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

He worked for 32 years, from 1925 to 1957, for the Katy line serving the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. He was an usher and baggage porter who made $2.10 a day and relied on tips. He was one of its last employees. He was hired at Cumberland Presbyterian in 1937 as a minister and was made pastor in 1941. He retired from the pulpit in 1976 but still could be found pinch-preaching there and filling in twice a month at the Goshen Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

He told the Tribune-Herald that preaching was “something you just don’t get tired of.”

We never tired of him. His lifelong friendship and encouragement proved invaluable to my family and to many others in East Waco. On behalf of my family, my sincere gratitude and heartfelt appreciation go to those who were instrumental in the bestowal of this most worthy honor for this most worthy man.

Georgia Madelyn Jefferson is blind and lives in a Waco assisted-living facility. This column was written with the help of her friend Patsy Jones and Trib assistant opinion editor Sandra Sanchez.