Consultant grateful for sisterhood

Talking to Beverly Smith is like talking to an old friend. You start out talking about that lovely red suit she’s wearing and the next thing you know you’re talking about the kids and, oh, where did the time go?

Right away you know she’s the real thing, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. And you know right away why Smith beat out four other contestants to become the national secretary of the organization that inspired her to become the woman she is.

She grew up the daughter of a civil rights activist named Louie Evans, who believed race relations would improve when every one else was saying no way.

Not only did her family integrate their Ohio neighborhood, they integrated the local swimming pool, too.

All you have to do is put your toe in, her daddy told her when he learned her band had planned an outing there. We’ll be right behind you.

It was a lot to take on for a 15-year-old but Smith stuck her foot in just like her daddy told her. Nothing happened.

“I can’t swim to this day,” she said, laughing.

It was these sorts of things that helped Smith, the girl, develop a strong sense of who she was, and so by the time she entered Bowling Green State University in 1966, she was ready for just about anything including being called a, well, that awful N-word.

What she lacked growing up in that Ohio neighborhood, Smith said recently, was a connection to other strong African-American women like her mother.

Bowling Green was different. It was there that she discovered DST, which had nothing but strong black women. Women like Dorothy Height, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, Shirley Chisholm, the first Black female member of the U.S. Congress and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College: women who were known for their community service and activism, women any kid could be proud of.

“Black women who helped shape America,” is the way Smith put it.

“When Delta was formed, its first act was to march in the suffrage movement for the right to vote,” she recalled. “They still didn’t have the right to vote but they marched any way.”

She pledged Delta her first year at Bowling Green and was inducted on Oct. 21, 1967. Come Tuesday, more than 40 years ago. That’s a long time and Smith is still happy, still dressed in her signature red. Beverly Smith’s fortune is knowing that she has a small nation of sisters behind her —- 250,000 spread across the world.

She graduated in 1970, and everywhere her feet have taken her since —- and they’ve taken her a lot of places —- the sisterhood has been present. Literally.

“Our consulting firm’s very first client was a Delta,” she said. “The church I belong to I found because of a Delta. I’ve moved eight times and there was a chapter in every city.”

Now a resident of Marietta, Smith and her husband, Stephen, co-own The HR Group, Inc., a management consulting firm. She is executive director for stewardship and development at the Technical College System of Georgia and still manages to volunteer in her community and with Delta Sigma Theta.

This summer her good friend Brenda Haywood encouraged her to run for secretary. She even signed up to run Smith’s campaign.

“I really wanted to win for Brenda,” Smith said.

Back in July, they were in a plenary session on the last day of their annual convention in Orlando. Smith and Haywood, who for years had suffered from Parkinson’s disease, sat next to each other.

About the time the results flashed on the screen, Smith got a text message from her daughter Stacy Frazier, the other Delta in the family. She was Delta’s 24th national secretary, her daughter told her.

Smith and Haywood turned to each other and embraced.

“That was great,” she said. “Bittersweet now.”

A couple of weeks ago, Smith’s sisterhood got a little smaller. Haywood died suddenly of cardiac arrest.

There is, however, a high note. Stacy gave birth to Smith’s first grandson.

Isn’t that just the way life unfolds sometimes?

gstaples@ajc.com