Biography
He was born in Illinois on October 17, 1884, then his family moved to Union, Oregon. In 1907 he married Hilder Florentina Youngberg of Galesburg, Illinois. Their first son, Sylvester Smith, was killed at age 11 by a car in 1919, in Chicago. They had a second son, Prevost Vedrines Smith (1913–1991) aka Prevost Floyd Smith. In 1930 the family was living in Morrisville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania and Floyd was working as an engineer. Prevost and Floyd started the Smith Parachute Company at Gillespie Field in San Diego County, California which became the Prevost Smith Parachute Company.
Floyd died on April 18, 1956 in San Diego, California of cancer. He was buried in the Portal of Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation.
Read more about this topic: James Floyd Smith
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)