Rob Smith never imagined he’d end up in Jacksonville, let alone spend the bulk of his life in the Bold City.
Though he grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Rob was no stranger to Florida: His parents had a beach house in Pensacola, and he attended the University of Florida during his college years, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture and a master’s degree in urban regional planning.
“I grew up meeting a lot of people who were either in school or planning to go to Florida, and so I decided that’s what I wanted to do,” Rob said.
During his college years, Smith would join fraternity brothers on visits to Jacksonville, which primarily consisted of time spent at the Beaches or bar hopping. Up to that point, that was the extent of his knowledge of the First Coast.
Rob spent some time in Orlando working for the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the predecessor to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.
“I got to do a lot of early Disney stuff, which was fun,” Smith said.
Rob ‘fooling around’ in his backyard.
Fate would intervene, though, and work would bring him back to Northeast Florida, where he met his wife, Linda, a lifelong Avondale resident. They met through mutual friends.
“She was dating someone I knew, [but] then she and I went out a few times and we lived together for, I don’t know, 30-something years,” Rob said.
Though he spent some time working on Amelia Island and Fernandina, this first stint in the greater Jacksonville area wouldn’t last long.
“All [Linda] wanted to do was get out of Dodge,” Rob said, so they ended up in Fort Myers, where they lived for nearly a decade.
By that time, however, Rob began hearing great things about Jacksonville, and that, coupled with Fort Myers’ intense heat, planted the idea in Smith’s mind of returning north. Making the timing of the move even more appealing was the fact that a business was interested in buying out Rob’s client contacts for his company in Fort Myers.
“It was a time that just a lot of cool stuff was going on here, so I pretty much conned Linda into coming,” Rob recalled. “She was a stockbroker. We got here and loved it.”
That was in 1987. Though Linda grew up in Avondale, the couple decided to settle on the other side of the river in a one-story house in San Marco, where they lived for close to 20 years before moving into a smaller home.
Rob had two children from a previous marriage, and together, he and Linda had a son, Robert L. Smith, who some San Marco residents might recognize from the Grape and Grain Exchange.
Shortly after they moved to San Marco, Rob met a fellow San Marco resident, Barbara Puckett, who was actively involved in the community. She informed him she’d heard about him and that she was going to put him to work – and she did.
Rob poses (center) with the 2016 recipients of San Marco Preservation Society’s beautification awards.
Rob was involved in several major San Marco projects, including the San Marco Improvement project, the Balis Park renovation and expansion, and the free public parking lot by Aspire Church of San Marco and Right Size San Marco.
In his free time, Rob enjoyed traveling with Linda. They went to visit Robert when he lived in Barcelona as a young adult after he completed college at UNF.
“We made a deal with him,” Rob said. “If he was going to go to UNF, we were going to save a whole lot of money. So he wanted to go live in Barcelona and we said, ‘Okay, whatever money we’re not spending on college, you can go live in Barcelona.’”
They enjoyed traveling together, though Rob said as a stockbroker, Linda rarely traveled for longer than two weeks at a time.
“She said every time she stayed away for two weeks, something horrible happened to the market, so I couldn’t get her to go on long trips,” Rob said.
Linda passed away 15 years ago.
“Oh, she was a very cool lady and she put up with me,” Rob said. “I wouldn’t want to put up with me.”
Today, Rob lives in a condo just a block off the Square alongside a tight-knit community of neighbors that are more than just co-habitants in the same condo complex; they’re friends. Rob still travels – his top three vacations were visits to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
He exercises almost daily, enjoys reading history and will sometimes spend an afternoon people watching in the Balis Park that he helped transform or visiting one of the many restaurants in the neighborhood.
“It’s a great neighborhood, although it’s changed so much,” Rob said. “So many young people.”