PENDLETON — J.D. Smith, a writer and longtime employee of the Pendleton Center for the Arts, is retiring.

A grant writer and program manager from Athena, Smith left an indelible mark on the center during his 20-year career.

“J.D. leaves enormously big shoes to fill in hiring a new grant writer for the arts ccenter,” said Board President Susan DeMarsh. “He has shaped the cultural life of Pendleton in a profound way. We’re excited for him to enjoy retirement and look forward to reading about his travels.”

After coming to Eastern Oregon with his wife in the early 1990s, Smith wrote a grant in 1998 to help turn the city’s former library into what is now the art center.

“He shaped the heart and soul of the organization,” said Roberta Lavadour, the art center’s executive director. “He steered us early on toward things that are now on-trend, which is equity and inclusion.”

In addition to supporting local arts and music through grant writing, Smith helped start the center’s Art Rocks Teens and Rock & Roll Camp, providing upward of 100 students an opportunity to play music, write songs and sing together in the summers.

“The noise that results is beautiful,” Smith said. “Of all the things I’ve done, that’s my favorite.”

All the while, Smith has been an advocate for equal opportunity among students, particularly those who may not be able to afford certain programs.

“Because the art center is situated on the north hill, it’s been a constant struggle for me to make sure that the kids from down in the flats can come up there and do what they want to do too,” he said. “So I’ve always been an advocate for free programs for kids.”

A lifelong storyteller,Smith grew up in Alliance, Nebraska. He studied Latin and Greek and earned his bachelor’s degree at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, just as the civil rights movement was underway.

From 1964 to 1965, Smith worked as a civil rights worker in Mississippi when churches and freedom houses were being bombed, including an interracial living space where he lived.

“I’ve never really written much about that because I’m still processing it,” he said. “I have no desire to ever go back to Mississippi. I can tell you that.”

He left Mississippi to begin a master’s course at Harvard. But the civil rights movement had changed him, and he was dissatisfied with life at a prestigious institution and its “stuffy people.” So he dropped out.

He moved to California for a short period before moving out to Devon, Montana, a small rural town near the Canadian border where, for a year, he taught eight students at a one-room schoolhouse.

“It was far out,” he said.

After that, he returned to California, where he fell in with, among others, Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. He found whatever means of work he could find to survive, including making and selling leather sandals from the back of his truck in the parking lot of Stanford University.

In 1968, he began his four-year stint as a manager and editor for the Whole Earth Catalog, a counterculture magazine with essays and articles that, put simply, showed readers how to optimize their lives.

In 1972, Smith and his colleagues won the National Book Award for the “Last Whole Earth Catalog,” raking in millions of dollars in book sales, which they donated as a foundation to organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Black Panthers food for children program in Oakland, California, and other crisis centers. Doling out those funds was how Smith said he got into grant writing.

From there, Smith went on to live a blue collar lifestyle. He said he worked as a golf course greens mower, an auto parts runner, bookstore clerk and much more.

“In retrospect, as an 80-year-old man, I liked the blue collar stuff more than anything else,” he said. “It was never tough to find a job.”

In 1992, he moved to Pendleton, and joined the art center a few years later. Lavadour said Smith has been an integral advocate for the center’s employees and has consistently done the behind-the-scenes work to keep things running smoothly.

“He’s a storyteller, and he’s been able to tell our story at the art center exceedingly well,” Lavadour said.

Smith said he’s enjoyed working with youths and meeting people during his 20 years at the art center. And he knows it was a good job because “nobody’s hit me and I haven’t been attacked by wolves,” he said. Overall, he said, it was good for him to hang out with people who made things and did stuff.

“That’s probably the best thing that I’ve been able to do there or what’s happened to me,” Smith said. “It’s been a good job, all in all.”

The art center is now seeking applicants for a half-time grant writer position.