![\"Rob](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RobSmith_Photo1-1024x683.jpg\")
Rob \u2018fooling around\u2019 in his backyard.<\/p>\nRob Smith never imagined he\u2019d end up in Jacksonville, let alone spend the bulk of his life in the Bold City.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s degree in landscape architecture and a master\u2019s degree in urban regional planning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up meeting a lot of people who were either in school or planning to go to Florida, and so I decided that\u2019s what I wanted to do,\u201d Rob said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Rob spent some time in Orlando working for the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the predecessor to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to do a lot of early Disney stuff, which was fun,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
Rob \u2018fooling around\u2019 in his backyard.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was dating someone I knew, [but] then she and I went out a few times and we lived together for, I don\u2019t know, 30-something years,\u201d Rob said.<\/p>\n
Though he spent some time working on Amelia Island and Fernandina, this first stint in the greater Jacksonville area wouldn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll [Linda] wanted to do was get out of Dodge,\u201d Rob said, so they ended up in Fort Myers, where they lived for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n
By that time, however, Rob began hearing great things about Jacksonville, and that, coupled with Fort Myers\u2019 intense heat, planted the idea in Smith\u2019s 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\u2019s client contacts for his company in Fort Myers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a time that just a lot of cool stuff was going on here, so I pretty much conned Linda into coming,\u201d Rob recalled. \u201cShe was a stockbroker. We got here and loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d heard about him and that she was going to put him to work \u2013 and she did.<\/p>\n
![\"Rob](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RobSmith_Photo3-1024x626.jpg\")
Rob poses (center) with the 2016 recipients of San Marco Preservation Society\u2019s beautification awards.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made a deal with him,\u201d Rob said. \u201cIf 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, \u2018Okay, whatever money we\u2019re not spending on college, you can go live in Barcelona.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
They enjoyed traveling together, though Rob said as a stockbroker, Linda rarely traveled for longer than two weeks at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said every time she stayed away for two weeks, something horrible happened to the market, so I couldn\u2019t get her to go on long trips,\u201d Rob said.<\/p>\n
Linda passed away 15 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, she was a very cool lady and she put up with me,\u201d Rob said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to put up with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019re friends. Rob still travels \u2013 his top three vacations were visits to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a great neighborhood, although it\u2019s changed so much,\u201d Rob said. \u201cSo many young people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rob Smith never imagined he\u2019d end up in Jacksonville, let alone spend the bulk of his life in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":206913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-206912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115161508692489326","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}