Our History
Mignon C. Smith — journalist, horsewoman, and philanthropist — endowed the Foundation in 2005 in honor of her parents.
Mignon C. Smith was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in a small town nearby. Her father, J. Craig Smith, was head of Avondale Mills, a large textile company manufacturing mostly denim cloth and cotton yarn. She attended public school in Sylacauga through the ninth grade, then graduated from the Madeira School in Virginia near Washington, DC, and Briarcliff Junior College in Briarcliff Manor, New York, with an AA. She transferred to the University of Alabama as a junior to major in political science and journalism.
Mignon was a member of the Congressional Radio/TV Galleries, the National Press Club, and SPJ. She was a White House correspondent and was in the White House Press Room the night President Nixon resigned. She retired as Washington correspondent for the Alabama Radio Network after some thirty years reporting news with and about Alabamians.
In 1954, Mignon became the youngest Joint Master of Fox Hounds in the United States. For her new riding jacket, she chose a pink collar instead of the traditional black worn by English lady hunt masters — an unusual move in a pre-women's-lib era, but as she put it, she wanted to "brighten up the Alabama hunt scene."
After college, she started a riding school and small stud farm south of Birmingham. When her farm lease ran out, she moved to Washington, DC with a nucleus of her thoroughbred breeding stock and became a radio news reporter for Alabama stations. After retiring from radio, she devoted her full attention to thoroughbred breeding, racing, and the sport business, managing over 65 head of homebreds boarded across three states.
In 2005, Mignon endowed the Foundation in her father and mother's names — the J. Craig and Page T. Smith Scholarship Foundation — to provide full tuition for Alabama high school seniors attending Alabama colleges. A minimum C+ grade average plus civic involvement and/or special family responsibility is required to receive an award, and a C+ must be maintained to continue the four-year scholarship.
Also in 2005, The Mignon C. Smith Living Trust endowed the J. Craig Smith Chair for Integrity in Business through the University of Alabama Donor Advised Fund, funding programs in the University's Business Department and Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility.
Concerned about the erosion of integrity among the current generation of business leaders, Mignon hoped these programs would become a catalyst for teaching the ethics her father lived by in business — to our future leaders.
