At a 90th birthday celebration Saturday afternoon at Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church, community members made clear that they want the park to bear the name of the man widely credited with creating it, Dr. Roscoe C. Smith.
“You deserve this park to be named for you,” one speaker said during the tribute.
That call framed an afternoon in which family members, friends and former students reflected on Smith’s life of service, particularly his role in establishing recreational and educational opportunities for Black residents in the 50s and 60s. It also set the stage for a petition circulated during the event, intended for presentation to the Hope City Board Tuesday.
When Smith rose to speak after hearing the tributes, he turned attention away from himself and toward the future.
“What I desire is for our children to be the best that they can be,” he said.
His remarks centered on education, discipline and opportunity, drawing on experiences from his years in the classroom.
“I passed the books out… told them to take the books home,” he said, recalling a student who was among the first to receive free school books as a result of an effort to acquire them that Smith helped bring to fruition. “She just came back, and she put the book on my desk… ‘I’ve already read it.’ So it made me go out to get more books.”
The story drove home to the audience his belief in cultivating potential.
“That’s a smart kid from this city,” he said. “And I want to say that I want them, and we want them to be the best that they can be and anything they can be.
He also spoke to the importance of setting high academic goals and the rewards that come after. “I like to be called… Dr. Smith, PhD, Doctor of Philosophy,” he said. “I don’t care where you go in this world, you can’t beat that.”
His message followed directly: “Let’s have our children to shoot for that also.”
At the same time, he credited his own foundation for shaping his life. “Every good thing that ever happened to me, I could look back to my foundation in the church,” he said.
He closed with appreciation for those gathered and a continued commitment to the community.
“I want to thank you so much for everything… and everything I can ever do, I will do for Hope,” he said. On behalf of the many family members who escorted him to the ceremony, he said, “We love Hope… and we always will.”
The remarks followed a series of tributes that traced Smith’s impact from multiple angles. One speaker highlighted the foundational work that led to the present-day North Side Park.
“He organized the Black-folk park on the north side,” the speaker said. “He organized the swimming pool.”
The speaker added that recognition for those efforts has been long in coming.
“Some things that you’ve done but you haven’t been recognized for. That’s now in the making,” he said.
Others offered more personal reflections. One of his former students recalled how Smith intervened to improve her ability to learn. “I didn’t know I was blind until the eighth grade, and he went to my mother and my grandmother and said she needs glasses,” she said. “He saw in me what he needed to see.”
She also pointed to the role the park played in the lives of young people.
“Thank you for making it possible every Wednesday for us to go to the park,” she said. “You deserve this park to be named for you.” Wednesday evenings were something of a social event at North Side Park, then called City Park, when you were liable to see dances, boxing matches, baseball games and many other things.
Another speaker reflected on the early days of the facility.
“I remember in 1960 when the pool was built,” she said. “I thank God that I was able to swim that pool… and I’m determined that the North Side Park will become Roscoe Smith Park… no matter what.”
Family members described how the park functioned as a gathering place across generations.
“I just thank God… whenever we came to Hope every Wednesday night, we had somewhere to go,” one speaker said. “That was the Park.”
She credited Smith’s foresight.
“I just thank him that he had that vision about the pool,” she said.
A letter read during the program that came from President Bill Clinton’s first Chief of Staff and Hope High graduate Mack McLarty broadened the scope of Smith’s accomplishments, noting the next chapter in Smith’s career in education and administration after he left Hope for Dallas.
“Roscoe became the first African American male to be promoted from teaching to administration in the Dallas Independent School District,” the letter stated, while emphasizing that “he never forgot about his roots in Hope.”
Other speakers focused on the example Smith set for younger generations.
“He showed us the way… to do good, get good grades, then go to college,” one family member said. “Then… you come back home and you make a way for those… that live there.”
Throughout the program, that pattern, academic achievement followed by returning home and serving where your roots are, was cited as central to Smith’s legacy.
As the celebration concluded, attention returned to the petition circulated among attendees. Organizers indicated that it would be presented to the Hope City Board at its regular meeting Tuesday, May 5th, where the board is expected to receive the document after the meeting’s 7:00 p.m. start in City Hall and may decide during that meeting whether to move forward with naming North Side Park in honor of Dr. Roscoe Smith.
A delicious barbecue lunch followed the ceremony which was catered by Carrigan’s Backyard Barbecue.
