– Virginia Smith
By Barry Wise Smith
For 25 years, Mountain Brook native Virginia Carruthers Smith has served her community on the City Council—17 of those years as Council President (Smith has served as president since 2008). For her many years of dedicated service, this year, the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce selected her as the 2025 Jemison Visionary Award winner.
“I’m incredibly honored to receive this award,” Smith says. “I feel as a council member, it is an award that is not individually won but as a team. We all work together to strive for the best for our city, and I’m grateful to be a part of this amazing team of public servants.”
Smith grew up in Mountain Brook attending Highland Day School before moving to Brook Hill, an all-girls school that is now The Altamont School. “All my friends were going to the junior high, and I went to Brook Hill,” Smith recalls. But after her first year, Brook Hill became Altamont and went coed, and Smith graduated high school there.
She went on to do her undergraduate work at Bryn Mawr, another all-women institution, where she majored in classical archeology. “I did several digs during high school,” Smith remembers. “I did several Paleo Indian digs in the U.S., and I did a dig in Mallorca, Spain, in the ruins of a Roman city.” As a student at Bryn Mawr, Smith continued her archeological education, spending two years working on the site of the ancient city of Morgantina in Sicily, Italy. “I just wanted to dig,” Smith says. “I loved that part of it, but I didn’t want to teach. I wanted to be out in the field digging, not in the classroom.”
Smith’s father was an attorney, so she developed a Plan B and decided to go to law school. “It was always in the back of my mind,” she says. To get experience, Smith took a job as a paralegal in Washington D.C. while applying to law school. After she gained acceptance to the law school at Washington & Lee, she left her job to return to school. After graduation, Smith moved back home and went to work at Maynard Cooper (now Maynard Nexen) where she met her husband, David. “I had a job offer from a D.C. law firm, but the Birmingham firms offered a lifestyle that was more conducive to having a family, and I knew I wanted to be married and have children,” Smith says.
The Smiths married in 1989 and decided it was best they didn’t practice at the same firm. Smith moved to Johnston Barton where she stayed for two-and-a-half years. During that time, she had her oldest son Auston followed quickly by her son Everett. “I turned in my resignation at Johnston Barton the month before Everett was born,” Smith says. “They had been so good to me, but I knew it was time.” Daughter Virginia followed in 1994.
While no longer practicing law, Smith wasn’t one to sit still. She became involved in community service, serving on the Preschool Partners board, volunteering at St. Luke’s and working with the Botanical Gardens and BirminghamMuseum of Art.
With three young children, Smith had a keen interest in Mountain Brook’s parks and decided to apply for a position on the city’s park board. Helene Elkus, who served on the city council at the time and served as the park board liaison, had decided not to run for re-election and was looking for a female with parks interest when she came across Smith’s application. “She (Elkus) approached me about serving on council,” Smith recalls. “I hadn’t really thought about that, but after talking it over with her and my husband, I decided to run for council in 2000.” Winning her election, Smith has served on the city council ever since (her councilmate Billy Pritchard was elected at the same time and still serves on the council with Smith).
Looking back on her two-and-a-half decades of service, Smith is proud of what the council and the city have accomplished. “I love the big projects,” she says. “I love getting in the weeds and really digging into those. I’m very proud of the projects we’ve done.” Some of her highlights are the creation of the Village Master Plan in 2017, which led to the development of Lane Parke; the building of the new City Hall in Crestline; the development of Cahaba Village on Highway 280 and the redevelopment of the city’s parks.
Looking forward, Smith is anticipating the opening of the city’s new fire station on Overton Road; the development of Chester Court, a new residential development on the site of the former Shades Valley Presbyterian Church; a new senior housing development on the site of Village Dermatology and two new traffic roundabouts on Cahaba Road in Mountain Brook Village. “I’m hoping we have a great Brookwood plan soon, and I hope the Hollywood bridge gets built,” she says about the pedestrian additions to the bridge on Hollywood between Homewood and Mountain Brook.
“I’ve enjoyed it all,” Smith says. “I’ve met lots of terrific people, worked with fabulous council members, and the staff of the city of Mountain Brook could not be better. I’m honored and privileged to serve this city.”
