Women's History Month - Barbara Smith

"My three boys got interested and Leonard told me, 'it is the most beautiful sport in the world. Tennis is gorgeous. Just the strokes are beautiful. I want to do that.'

"I thought the kids needed more outings, so I stood at a backboard at Caswell Tennis Center for a meeting and I waited through the whole meeting and raised my hand at the back and I said 'listen I'm sorry. I've listened to y'all you do this whole meeting and y'all have only talked about seniors and adults. What are y'all doing for the kids? The next morning, I got a phone call and I was in charge of it. That's what happens to you if you raise your hand at a meeting and more than 40 years later, I'm still doing it.

"Les Snyder was the man who sort of turned my tennis volunteering life upside down because I had come out of juniors, I had come out of rankings, I had come out of local, I had come out of state a section level. I got up there at the USTA [National] and one day Les Snyder said I need you to go and make friends with the USOC. His exact following words were, "I don't care how many breakfast meetings you have to go to, I don't care how many luncheons, how many afternoon meetings, how many cocktail parties, how many dinner parties you have to go to. I came home and I told my husband and my boys and said 'I don't know, I liked what I was doing before," and they all looked at me like I was an idiot. They said 'well you could get involved with Olympic tennis, if you don't take this job, you're crazy." So I spent 20 years as the rep to the USOC and served on the USOC board. It turned my career differently and who knew I would go in an international direction instead of junior tournaments.

"I would say that every woman that was in the San Antonio Tennis Association leadership back in those days when I was coming along, those women in that association really did a good job. They had a lot of strong women that that led them. They had huge tournaments and they just operated in a way that really showed me that you can do it and you don't have to have all the men in the world leading. To have [SATA] be led by women, I thought that was very important

"Somebody asked. I think we all need to watch for talent and we need to encourage it. When somebody recognizes something in you, that they think you can do it -- I think it's really important to be asked. It gives you this sense of, 'oh they think I can do this.' and this is interesting to me. This is a challenge -- I want it, I'll do it and I think that's why I stayed so long and I kept getting interesting jobs. I was chairman of the Davis Cup, Fed Cup and Olympic Committee, I served on the International Tennis Federation Committee for 20 years and that's pretty interesting stuff.