James M. Smith

James M. Smith was born November 4, 1913 in McMechen, a small town near Wheeling. He received his education at West Virginia public schools and spent two years at West Liberty Teachers College. He graduated from WVU in the class of 1936.

Smith worked seven years with Fiscose, where he conducted research on corrosion in Hastelloy and other metal alloys. He was in charge of the Chemical Recovery Department, including multiple-effect evaporators land huge crystallizers. In May 1943, he accepted a job as head of the Technical Service Department of Westvaco Chlorine Products Corp in New York. This job kept him criss-crossing the United States until the end of WWII. Customers included the Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, California, Donut Corporation of America, Edgewood Arsenal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a depth-bomb factory on Long Island, New York.

After the war, Smith moved to Brazil as sales representative of the Prosperity Company of New York, selling to hospitals, tanneries and garment manufacturers. This revealed a growing demand for polyester buttons. As a result, he installed the first polyester button factory in Brazil in 1957. The Brazil car and truck industry was started by President Kubicheck in Brazil after he won the 1960 election. To accompany this industry, Smith introduced his quick-drying putty, PLASKIT, for car repairs, body work and foundries. While in Brazil, he recovered fully from a poisonous snake bite while installing a 10 KVA turbine generating plant on his property, replacing sodium propane lights and using their 10-acre lake with a 25-ft. head at the dam to operate the turbine.

After closing down his button factory in 1987 due to Brazil’s uncontrolled inflation of 20 percent per month, Smith settled in Gainesville, Georgia. With forestry personnel from the University of Tennessee and land owners in Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri, Smith organized the American Paulownia Association. The association peaked with 350 members interested in planting paulownia tree seedlings. He organized and operated the greenhouse seedlings operation, producing and selling thousands in 23 states, British Columbia and West Germany. He contributed 4,000 man-hours of labor in running this greenhouse, which received only limited funding by the Georgia Forestry Commission. Restricted by glaucoma visual problems, Smith is no longer active in the Paulownia Project, but still handles occasional inquiries about Paulownia trees.

Smith resides in Loveland, Colorado.