Basketball - Obituary-Robert Smith is gone |13 February 2009

“Robert Charles Smith, 57, passed away on February 10, 2009, in Jacksonville, Florida.  He had been serving as an evangelist at the South Jacksonville Church of Christ since August 2007.
He was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on December 13, 1951 to Eddie Smith and Rebecca Wilson Smith.  

Robert married his wife, Andrea, in 1989 while living in Germany. They have two daughters, Rebecca Julian, born in 1990, and Deborah Dionne, born in 1991. Robert’s father died in 2000. In addition to his wife and daughters, he is survived by his mother, two brothers Eddie and Kenny, and one sister Jocelyn Lamar. 

Robert was an outstanding athlete at Jefferson High School in Daly City, California, and was recently nominated to the Daly City Sports Hall of Fame. He gained a BA in sociology from the University of San Diego before moving to Hagen, Germany, where he was a stellar professional basketball player from 1974 to 1983.

After an injury curtailed his basketball career, Robert completed a three-year advanced Bible study programme at the Kirkland Church of Christ in Kirkland, Washington. In 1986 he returned to Germany, where he worked for three years as an evangelist in Aachen and four years in Kiel. Robert spoke German fluently and is much loved by Christians there.

In 1994 he and his family moved to Seychelles to do evangelistic work. While there, he also served as technical adviser to the national basketball team and as a youth development officer with the National Sports Council.

When he left Seychelles, Robert left behind a thriving congregation where one of his converts, Jimmy Petrousse, now works as an evangelist.
In 2006 Robert worked for one year with a congregation in Darmstadt, Germany, before moving to the United States so that his daughters could graduate from high school in the US. 

Robert was unusually successful in doing personal evangelism because of his easy manner and genuine interest in every person he met. He loved his family deeply, and they were models for all of those who came to know them. Robert, Andrea, Rebecca and Deborah have been respected as examples in the South Jacksonville church.  

A big, friendly and transparently spiritual man, Robert Smith will be remembered by a devoted family, scores of spiritual children and hundreds of friends in Churches of Christ all over the United States, Germany and Seychelles.”