Robert F. Smith Jr., 82; San Diego Ad and PR Exec Led Tourist Bureau

Robert F. Smith Jr., former head of what is now the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau who led the agency through a successful campaign to build the city’s first modern convention center, has died. He was 82.

Smith, who later headed the city’s largest advertising agency, died Thursday of cancer at a hospice in San Diego.

Smith was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and his family moved to San Diego when he was a boy.

After graduating from high school in 1942, Smith was commissioned as a Naval officer in an ROTC program and earned a bachelor’s degree while in the service.

He spent much of World War II assigned to the battleship New York in the Pacific theater. After the war he received a master’s in business administration from UCLA.

He held executive positions for several employers in Los Angeles and San Diego, including Ryan Aeronautical, General Dynamics and the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations.

In 1960, he was named director of what was then the San Diego Convention and Tourism Bureau.

By 1964, San Diego opened its first modern convention center downtown and was establishing an identity as a vacation destination. That same year, Smith became president of Phillips-Ramsey Inc., then the city’s largest advertising firm. He later became chairman.

In 1974, he and David Nuffer founded the public relations firm Nuffer Smith. The firm, now Nuffer, Smith, Tucker, is one of the largest of its kind in San Diego.

Smith also served on the state’s Tourism Commission, Economic Development Commission and Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

He is survived by his wife, Mary; son, Navy Capt. Peter Smith of Honolulu; daughters, Mary Frances Smith-Reynolds of Los Angeles and Barbara Smith of Paso Robles; and four grandchildren.

Services are to be held at 9 a.m. Wednesday at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.