Ex-Teacher Helps Black Students Pay for College

The reporter called Helen Broyles-Smith at her home in Baldwin Hills and asked her to talk about her 4-year-old fund that awards college scholarships to black youngsters from low-income households.

“Call some other time. I have something important to do,” Broyles-Smith said. She had to feed her dog.

With quiet fortitude, the 85-year-old former elementary schoolteacher administers the Theophilus G. Smith Scholarship Fund, which she created to honor her late husband.

She awards scholarships to as many as five students each year at Cal State L.A., where she earned her master’s degree in education. The scholarships provide $1,000 in assistance each academic quarter.

“I think that’s pretty good for a widow,” Broyles-Smith said. “It’s coming out of our retirement money.”

She is plain-spoken about her motives: “I’ve been so blessed in every way, it was time for me to give something back.”

Scholarship applicants must meet Broyles-Smith’s standards. They have to compile a C average in high school and maintain it through college, complete a computer science course in their first year of college and work at least part time during the summer.

She stresses that her interest is in low-income students. “I don’t award my scholarships to doctors’ or lawyers’ kids. They don’t need my help.”

And she prides herself on being willing to aid students with average marks. “Usually everyone is looking for the top scholar. But if I feel these are kids that are trying hard to make it, and are making it to a degree without any help, I want to help them.”

Born in Indianapolis in 1911, Broyles-Smith moved to Los Angeles in 1930. She enrolled at UCLA shortly after, during a time when “you could count the black folks there with your fingers.”

Her higher education was interrupted by love and war. After two years at school, shemet Theophilus Smith, fell in love and married him. She quit school to travel and to be a homemaker. During World War II, she worked in a defense plant.

After the war, she earned her bachelor’s degree at UCLA in education and began a 30-year career as an elementary school teacher in South-Central Los Angeles.

Her husband, a post office superintendent, died in 1990. Two years later, she established the scholarship fund.

“So many of the students in the black community are lost, they don’t get any help, so I wanted to honor my husband by helping them,” she said.

Last spring, Olivia Gabriel became the first of Broyles-Smith’s scholarship winners to graduate from Cal State L.A.

Gabriel, who attended Los Angeles High School, said she benefited not only from the money but also from Broyles-Smith’s personal attention.

She recalled a time when she was having trouble finishing a project because of a lack of computer time. Broyles-Smith promptly gave Gabriel her own computer--which was recently passed on to the next Smith scholarship winner in line to graduate.

“Olivia really hustled and worked hard to stay in school with what I gave her,” Broyles-Smith said.

Gabriel, 24, plans to continue in the footsteps of Broyles-Smith and become a teacher.

“Some friends at school used to ask me where did I meet that lady,” she said. “I would tell them she was an angel that God sent me.”