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A Daughter’s Admiration:

The greatest reward of good Parenting

Stella Smith

Few women ever rise to the rank of colonel in the Air Force, and fewer still come from the humble beginnings of Stella Smith. Col. Smith has traveled the world, has met heads of state, has dined in palaces, and is currently responsible for more than fifteen hundred airmen and twenty-seven airplanes. But of all the leaders she’s met, it’s her mother who earns her greatest respect and admiration.

Stella’s father abandoned her and her mother Moya when Stella was only a few months old.

When her husband left, British-native Moya had only been in America for less than a year, didn’t know how to drive, and had never even handled a dollar bill. “He met her, married her, and brought her over here, and then left her,” says Stella. He left her with a four-month-old baby, the rent paid up, and the promise of $100 a month in child support (which rarely materialized). His sister even came to take the family crib away. Moya’s plight was so desperate that her attorney’s secretary took her in for several weeks until she could get a waitressing job.

Throughout Stella’s childhood they constantly struggled financially. Both admit they were “literally close to starving at times.” Stella says, “I still can’t look at a bologna sandwich without being sad” because of all the “yucky” free school lunches she felt obliged to eat—often the only food she had.

Stella’s mother Moya doesn’t believe she did anything extraordinary in raising her exceptional daughter. She says with typical British understatement (and charming British accent), “I was just there for her. You just do what you think is right.”

But Stella’s mother passed on to her young daughter more than she knew. “She was a really good mom, a phenomenal mom,” says Stella. “The things she taught me influence everything about me.”

“The biggest thing she taught me is to look for opportunities. She never let our station in life limit my ability to dream big—ever. When I look at what the Air Force offers its people, it’s similar to the way my mom made me look at the world. It doesn’t matter what you started with or where you came from. It equalizes everyone. If you have a good attitude and look for opportunities, you can do anything.”

Col. Smith’s long list of accomplishments certainly attests to the truth of that belief. A graduate of the Air Force Academy and the Air War College, she has served for almost twenty-four years in the Air Force on eleven different bases, in Iraq, and on Capitol Hill as legislative liaison for the Air Force visiting forty-seven countries in thirty-six months.

But she is quick to downplay her own career and sing the praises of the single mother who raised her to expect greatness. Stella recalls that although they had no money for extras, her mother used all the resources they did have to find opportunities for her daughter including free dance lessons, free trumpet lessons, and free summer camps. “It didn’t matter what we didn’t have; she was going to go find what she could for me.”

Stella tells story after story of her mother’s sacrifice, perseverance, and determination to give her daughter the best life she could despite the cards life had handed them.

“My mom has had so many unfair things happen in her life,” says Stella. “She came to expect it. She wouldn’t stand up for herself, but she would stand up for me. My mom is a real introvert. She’s not going to talk about herself or brag about herself; but she is a very smart, educated lady, and she took all those skills and talents and focused them on what she could do for me.”

“Even though she was such an introvert, when it mattered to me, she came out of her shell and went to town. Like when my high school was calculating the class rankings in a very unfair way, counting all the classes equally. My mom marched her happy butt right down there into the guidance counselor’s office and got it changed. She was not going to have me not go to the Air Force Academy because another girl got a higher grade in art history than I got in AP chemistry. She was not seeking an unfair advantage, she just wanted a fair shake for me. And of course, it helped so many other people because I was not the only one in that situation.”

Moya also passed on her work ethic. “We were basically destitute at times and dependent on government assistance, but even then, my mom wanted to work so badly to support me, she would go to get a day job. Whatever was available—bottling 7-Up, putting handles on knives, driving a taxi for railroad workers. She wanted to teach me that you work no matter what. And the way the system was set up then, you actually lost more money than you made [because the income was taxed and government benefits were not]. She once came home from work with her arm in a sling because she got her hand caught in the machine at the knife factory. It was incredibly scary because she was everything to me.”

But of all the stories and all the sacrifices (taking a loan out just to pay her daughter’s initial uniform deposit, taking time off work and traveling to another city to get the required Air Force physical exam), the one thing that Stella most admired her mother for was the courage she showed in putting her only daughter on the plane to the Air Force Academy.

“I always knew that I was going to go to college after high school. First, that was a bold dream for her to give me, but I didn’t have a concept of how much it cost. I didn’t know my friends’ parents were saving. I just knew my mom was going to make happen somehow.” Fortunately, Stella did well enough in school to be accepted to the Air Force Academy, which is free, but she still realizes the self-sacrifice her mother made in putting her on that plane.

“I’m an only child, and she’s sending me who knows where. Living in Buffalo, New York, we had never been anywhere west of Michigan. I cried all the way to Newark. When I got to Denver, I called her (this is before cell phones) and said, ‘Mom, everybody else on this flight has a ticket through to Colorado Springs. I’m not sure what to do. Wait, I see a guy in a uniform. I’ll ask him.’ Click. This is the last call she gets from her seventeen-year-old. Two weeks later she gets a letter from me. You can’t call. When you get to the Academy, they just start yelling at you. You’re in basic training. I really admire her for helping me pursue my dreams.”

Moya consistently supported Stella encouraging her to continue at the Academy and when she considered quitting her Air Force career.

Stella remembers calling home and saying, “I can’t do this, I need to come home.”

But Moya never said okay. She also never said no.

“Do you have a test coming up?” she would ask.

“Yes, I have a test tomorrow.”

“Have you studied?” Moya would press.

“Yes.”

“Do you need to study some more?”

“Yes.”

“Well, go study for your test. I can’t get you a ticket tonight because AAA is closed. But call me tomorrow,” she would say knowing the next day the test would be fine.

“How perfect is that?” raves Stella. “I will never forget it. She has always been so supportive, even when it was to her own cost in a way, because she knew that keeping me in the Air Force life would mean that she was going to be alone.”

In spite of all that Moya suffered, she never spoke poorly of Stella’s father to her. “I really admire her for that,” says Stella. “I knew when the checks weren’t coming because we ate beans on toast or I couldn’t get new shoes for school, but she never said anything. When I asked if I could see my father, she would say, ‘When you get older, you can go see him. But I don’t want to see him.’ Not in a mean way though. I think that was a really good way to handle it.”

Stella did eventually meet her father at age twenty when she traveled to Kentucky to see her paternal grandmother. “I had told myself that he hadn’t seen me all these years because he didn’t know where I was. That made it easier for me. Then I realized, he lived next door to my grandmother who had been calling me and sending me gifts all these years, so that burst my bubble. He knew where I was. His teenagers [from another marriage] both had cars, and I didn’t have food?”

Their meeting was brief. He said, “I guess your mother told you it was all my fault. I figured that would be easier for you.”

Stella replied, “No. She taught me to think for myself.”

And she left—leaving behind any illusions of who her father might be but only cementing her conviction of the woman her mother was.

These days, although they live thousands of miles apart, the mutual admiration between mother and daughter is as strong as ever. Moya says, “Stella doesn’t realize how talented she is in many ways. When she compares herself to her peers, she thinks she’s normal; but at the Academy, all those kids were state superstars. Even now, she doesn’t seem to realize that she’s doing something extraordinary.”

That’s something else they have in common.