Early Life
Dennis Smith was born in the Eastern Oregon city of Ontario, Oregon, on January 19, 1938. In 1956, he graduated from Grant Union High School in John Day and enrolled at Willamette University in Salem.
He joined the United States Air Force in 1958, and served until 1960, when he joined the Oregon Air National Guard. Smith then earned a bachelor of arts degree from Willamette in 1961. He returned to the Air Force in 1962 and remained there until 1967, serving as a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. In the war, he flew the F-4C Phantom and completed about 180 missions. Smith remained in the aviation field as a flight engineer and co-pilot for a commercial airline, flying from 1967 until 1976.
In 1968, he also took over the family's newspaper business when his father died. He worked for Pan American Airlines, and in 1974 was chosen by fellow employees to serve as the union's lobbyist in Washington, DC. He was inducted into the Oregon Aviation Hall of Honor in 2009.
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