Nick Smith, our new Newton County High School Principal, told me, “This is a calling for me. There are some very hard days, some really good days, but never a day passes that I don’t know this is what God has called me to do.” When I began this interview with him, almost the first words out of Mr. Smith’s mouth were, “I don’t care who on this earth knows it, but the best two things I ever did in my life was give my heart to Jesus and teach my kids about Him.” He continued, “I remember being baptized as a child, but when I trace it back to the moment when I gave Jesus 100% of myself, He took an arrogant, foul-mouthed, bitter-hearted narcissist and instantly turned me into a compassionate, merciful spirit, and I’ve not been the same. I’ve not been perfect, but I’m a new man, born again.”
This experience also cemented his faith in God in another way, the acquisition of a good wife. He had met Kim Ellzey when they both were doing music “gigs” around the South. They were both singers, and he played the keyboard. She had always refused when he asked her out. After his encounter with God, he asked the Lord to pick out the woman He had for him. One month later, while spending time together as friends, she observed, “You’re a different person,” to which he replied, “Yes, I’m trying to be a godly man.” He recalled, “One year to the day that I had asked God to send me His choice of a wife, we were married.” He also spoke gratefully, “The good Lord took everything I wanted in a spouse and gave me better. She has a servant’s heart. That’s her gift. She is a servant.”
Nick’s wife Kim, born in 1985 to Julius and Karen Ellzey of Walker, Louisiana, is a nurse in Meridian. Nick says of her, “My wife… is unequivocally my very best friend. I adore her. She is in every way the voice of reason in my life.” He explains of her and their two children, Colt, a senior at NCHS, and Ryann, entering the seventh grade, that they are his three best friends. He commented, “I don’t drink because of my son and my daughter. I take my daughter out on dates. I want my son to learn from me how to treat his future wife.” Nick told me, “Colt is very athletic, plays baseball, loves hunting and fishing and working on the farm.” Ryann is creative and artistic. She told me she likes to paint, draw, and write narrative essays.
Mr. Smith and his family are active members at Clarke-Venable Baptist Church, where he plays the keyboard during worship and teaches Sunday School to third and fourth grade boys. He loves to help those children who need help the most, asking himself, “What is the best thing for each child,” and saying of his own efforts, “I will not accept failure.”
Nick Smith was born in 1982 in the Union area to James Earl and Rosemary Smith. He told me of his “granddaddy, Earl J. Smith, a sharecropper, who would go down Walmart aisles singing “Because He Lives,” in hopes someone would ask why he did that so he could witness to them. He said of his parents, “There have never been better parents than mine. If I could do it, I want to be the kind of man my daddy was. He is the finest, most humble man I’ve ever met.
Having said that, he told of the “best lesson Daddy ever taught me. I was eight years old. There was a little widow down the road. She promised me a dime for every ear of corn I’d bring to her. I worked hard out in the sun picking three or four buckets of corn. Before Daddy took me over there, he asked me if I thought God would want me to take the money or just give her the corn.” Nick readily agreed to the idea of giving her the corn.
Nick told me of his mama, still a nurse in Meridian, after 40+ years. He said of her, “Mama is the strength of the family… the woman behind the scenes making sure things are being taken care of.” He explained her nature, “If there were four pieces of pie and five mouths to feed, my mama don’t really like pie.” His siblings are Jordan Smith, Head Baseball Coach at NCHS, and Cassie Smith Gardner, a nurse in Meridian. Jordan and his wife Monica Vincent of Decatur have two children, Luann and Mary Tyler. Cassie is married to Landry Gardner of Forest, and they have one little one, Molly.
Nick graduated from Union High School in 2001, from East Central Community College in 2004, then from Mississippi State University in 2008 with his Bachelor of Science degree in Education. He taught three years at Carthage Jr. High, then 7th and 8th at Union Middle School. He earned his Master’s in the Art of Teaching in 2015 from the University of West Alabama, and an Educational Specialist degree in Administration in 2018. In 2019, he became the Assistant Principal of Southeast Lauderdale Elementary, then Union Middle School Principal in 2021. Dr. Tyler Hansford, our new Newton County School Superintendent, brought him to us this year.
In 2015, Mr. Smith received a call from an elder member of his home church, who told him, “God told me to tell you to go to Honduras.” He did go, and reported, “It was absolutely eye-opening. Dirt floors, starvation, sickness. I saw things that haunt my nightmares. I just kept thinking, ‘But for the grace of God…’ I went back six years in a row.” This experience helped him settle his academic philosophy more on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs than on Bloom’s Taxonomy. He shared, “Before you can expect a kid to do algebra or a term paper, you’ve got to let them know you care and fill their needs.” He also believes God has given him a spiritual gift of mercy and strives to be a servant leader.
He shared, “Newton County High School has been a wonderful school since the beginning. I want to make the best a little better. Every person in this county gave the best thing they have to offer, and they’re trusting us to take care of them, make them better, and smarter in every way. I promise to do just as much for every child as I do for my own.” He added, “I will never ask an adult to do anything I won’t do. I will never hold a child to a standard that I’m not meeting as well.” He commented, “I want to live in such a way…that when students see me they’ll think, ‘I want to be that kind of man.’” He quoted an author, Rita Pearson, saying, “Every single child deserves a champion.” But he also said, “I’m the least important person in this building.”
Live for Jesus! He’s coming soon! You may contact me at lagnesrussell@gmail.com or 601-635-3282.
