Paul Smith, founder of iconic Hampton drive-in Smitty’s Better Burger, dies at 90

Paul Smith was a man who lived by his principles: Work hard. Be honest. Take care of your family. Respect all people.

At Smitty’s Better Burger, the iconic drive-in burger restaurant he founded in Hampton in 1956 at the age of 25, he might have taken the first principle to a bit of excess.

“When I was a child, he’d go to Smitty’s at 5 in the morning, come home for a nap at 2, go back to work at 4 and then stay till midnight,” says his son, Ron Smith.

He was so honest he wouldn’t even tell a white lie to get his wife out of a phone call she didn’t want to take.

And as for taking care of his family, his son says, there wasn’t any question.

“He was a rock,” Ron says. “And when life got shaky, he got more steady.”

For generations in Hampton Roads, the broad red carport of Smitty’s has also also been a rock, a nearly unchanging link to bygone days where Ron says the fried chicken tastes the same as it did in the 1960s. Smitty’s is the last of the last, the only drive-in burger joint on the Peninsula. It dates back to a bygone time before there was even a McDonald’s, with carhops serving shrimp dinners or chili cheeseburgers on the same wire-mesh trays they’ve used since the ’50s.

In 1961, Paul built his house just a block from the restaurant so he could walk down the street to work. That house is where he raised three children with his wife, Ethel, who worked side-by-side with Paul at the restaurant for 45 years before passing in 2002.

And it’s also where he left this world on Monday at the age of 90, surrounded by the friends and family who loved him.

That was exactly where he wanted to be, his son says.

Throughout his life, says Ron, his father lived by the principle that all people deserved respect.

He came from humble beginnings, raised in the countryside of Illinois before moving to Virginia in the 1950s after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. He started Smitty’s with his brothers Bill, John, and Thomas, after Bill had cut his teeth running a What-A-Burger in San Angelo, Texas. At one time, the brothers had three locations in Hampton, before doubling down on the original location at 1313 King St. after their landlords at the other two spots spiked the rent.

From the very beginnings of the restaurant in the Eisenhower years, even as other local restaurants refused to serve Black people and restaurant sit-in demonstrations helped change the face of the country, Smitty’s had always just offered a burger to anyone who wanted to pay for it.

“It’ll be hard to tell you this story,” says Ron, his voice breaking as he’s overcome with the force of the memory. “But he was the first person in my life to just point blank tell you not to judge people by what color they are, or how much money they had. I guess I was probably less than 6, but I remember it pretty vividly.... He was very clear to his children that you judge people by what they do.”

Ron remembers a day in the early ’60s, when a group of 100 students from Hampton University came to sit in the parking lot.

“They sat down in a circle,” Ron says. "My mom was a carhop. They were sitting on the concrete, and she said, ‘What are they doing?’ And he said, “I don’t know, why don’t you ask?'”

They wanted to eat, she said.

“Well, then if they’ve got money, serve them some burgers,” Paul replied. “There’s a lot of people back there.”

“I wouldn’t have dreamed of not serving people,” Paul told the Daily Press in 1999. “We told them we already serve Blacks. We got a big order.”

He treated his employees with the same consistent devotion to decency, says Ron. And in an industry that can be like a revolving door, Smitty’s kept employees on its staff for as long as 40 years.

“They all have a sense of loyalty to him and my mother,” says Ron, who followed his father into the restaurant business with Harpoon Larry’s and two locations of the County Grill, in addition to his law practice. “I think he treated people well, and fair, and consistently. But I’d still like to know what his secret is. I have people that work for me for a long time, but not as many as he has.”

Paul’s daughter, Susan Roach, also stayed with the restaurant, shepherding Smitty’s with her father since the age of 14. And his daughter Penny Collins was " the most caring, nurturing health care provider a father could ask for," wrote Ron in their father’s obituary. Paul Smith is also survived by nine grandchildren, three great-grand-children, and his companion, Rosa Little.

And through it all, Smitty’s has survived as a red-and-white beacon to the neighborhood. Paul and Ethel, who kept working long after Paul’s brothers had retired, planted flower beds of tulips and red cockscombs to beautify the neighborhood.

The secret to the restaurant’s continued success, Paul told the Daily Press in 2006, was fresh meat and hot buns.

"Not many burger places warm their buns,” he said.

The Smith family kept the restaurant going even after an electrical fire in 2019 that left the restaurant closed for eight months, and after a truck barreled into their carport just after they’d gotten done re-installing it.

At the grand re-opening ceremony of Smitty’s on Nov. 29, Paul pulled into the restaurant in a 1955 Buick Century his son had procured for the purpose, greeted by applause and dozens of cars. He apologized to his employees that they’d been out of work for so long.

His granddaughter, Corry Smith, now a Hampton General District Court judge, served customers as a carhop, just like she did in her teens. Customers took their orders on trays that affixed to the sides of their cars, then turned their lights on to signal they were done eating.

When he arrived, to the sound of cheers, Paul greeted his customers with a line that might as well have been his mantra.

“Let’s get to work,” he said.

Paul Smith’s family will receive friends memorial at 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, 2020, at R. Hayden Smith Funeral Home, 245 S Armistead Ave, Hampton. The memorial service begins at 4:30 in the funeral home chapel, and will be livestreamed on the funeral home’s Facebook page. Memorial donations may be made to the Animal Aid Society, 80 Butler Farm Road, Hampton, VA 23666.

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com

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