By Gretchen Wing

Next time you drive past Lopez Community Center, take a look at the flag flying out front.

After Sept. 11, 2001, some community members felt the lack of an appropriate place to gather and grieve; the center’s flagpole was Jim Smith’s response.

Jim designed, commissioned, trucked from the South End, assembled, painted, and erected that 40-plus-foot pole, with help from some friends. He even installed the lights. Although the object of some controversy, that particular flag represents not only pride in America, but also Jim’s can-and-will-do spirit.

That same spirit, shared by Jim’s wife Connie, is responsible for the existence of Lopez Kiwis. Despite having zero agricultural background, Jim and Connie dived into kiwi farming in 1990 with 10 acres, a tractor, and their own labor.

“Everyone thought we were nuts,” Connie laughs.

Why kiwis? A niche fruit commanding premium prices, kiwis also ripen after picking, making them easier to transport than perishable fruit like berries or apples. Jim’s expertise and contacts from his previous career helped the Smiths connect with Larry’s Markets in Seattle and other smaller stores, and Lopez Kiwis flourished.

Of course, Jim and Connie had to work themselves ragged, erecting endless posts and wires, hauling loads of fruit off-island every week, and, in the winter, pruning “in the wind and rain,” Connie says with a shudder.

The Smiths did get a huge leg up from their community of friends, self-nicknamed “the Beavers.” This group formed back in the late 1980s, when Jim and Connie (newly married after the dissolution of previous marriages, and living in Bellevue) started visiting their friends Phil and Jean Weinheimer, and falling in love with Lopez.

Whenever they came up, all the Beavers would get together to work on someone’s project.

“We had a Sheetrock Beaver, a Structural Engineer Beaver,” Jim remembers. “I was the Electric Beaver.”

When the Smiths bought a cabin on Hunter Bay, the Beavers pitched in, and when they decided to become not only full-time Lopezians but farmers, the Beavers helped get those kiwis started.

Engineers make things work, so perhaps Jim’s background in engineering encouraged his confidence in other areas. An Ohio boy who graduated from the University of Toledo in 1959, Jim was hired almost immediately by Boeing and launched into a career focused on aviation. Four years at LAX Airport as a field service engineer, helping airlines troubleshoot the new 727s, led to a further degree in mechanical engineering, and later to sales. There Jim really hit his stride.

“I found that working with the people who make the airline run, that was much more fun,” he says, and Connie agrees: “He’s a people person.”

Nowhere has that appellation shown itself more truly than in Jim’s work on the Lopez Home Tour, of which Jim and Connie and their friend John Whetton are founding parents. Ten years ago, they and fellow board members of the brand-new Lopez Center were scrambling to  fundraise.

“You can only get so far with spaghetti dinners,” Jim says.

John Whetton, an avid skier, borrowed the idea of the Home Tour from Park City, Utah, and the board ran with it. As anyone who has experienced the Lopez Home Tour knows, it is no “Street of Dreams” affair. “Nobody here lives like that,” Jim says. “We wanted something that reflected the Lopez lifestyle.”

Hence the range of houses on tour, from straw-bale cottages to high-tech farmhouses and everything in between. Although some off-islanders attend, they are invited only from within the county, because, as Connie says, “We really do it for the locals.”

And the locals step up. Each year, eight sets of homeowners, dozens of volunteers, dozens more invaluable sponsors (Jim singles out Lopez Village Market as an especially generous business), and hundreds of ticket-buyers, nearly all local, combine to bring the Home Tour to life.

The rewards of the Home Tour, say Jim and Connie, are far beyond financial – although this year the tour raised over $24,000 for the Center (half from sponsors, another idea of John Whetton’s).

A week or two after each tour, Jim personally visits with each homeowner and inquires about their experience.  No one has ever voiced a regret. “Everybody is happy,” Connie says, and Jim adds that, not infrequently, participating homeowners go on to write generous checks and become volunteers the following year.

These days, the Lopez kiwi vines seem to be contemplating retirement, producing smaller fruit, difficult to market. Although the Smiths passed the job of transport on to others a while back, kiwi farming is now barely profitable. Unlike their vines, however, Jim and Connie are still going strong, already planning for next year’s Home Tour.

If anyone on their committee needs inspiration for the hard work to come, all they have to do is look at that flag flying at Lopez Center.