Thursday, May 3, 2007
Leslie C. Smith II, 45, an Army major and lawyer whose final active-duty assignment, in 2004, was chief of claims in the Office of
the Staff Judge Advocate at Fort Myer, died April 2 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He had acute myelocytic leukemia.
Maj. Smith, a Silver Spring resident, joined the Army in 1984 and served in the 101st Airborne Division. After graduating in 1989
from Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., he was assigned to the National Security Agency as chief of the legal
assistance office.
From 1992 to 1996, he practiced criminal law in the Office of the Judge Advocate General at the Pentagon. He retired from active
duty in 1996 after receiving a diagnosis of Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia, a blood cancer, but returned to active duty in 2001.
His decorations included the Army Commendation Medal and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal.
Leslie Carl Smith II was born in Boston and raised mostly in Washington, where he graduated in 1979 from Woodrow Wilson
High School. He was co-captain of the high school's championship soccer teamin his senior year, and he played on the
All-Army soccer team in 1985 and 1986.
He was a 1984 geology and government graduate of the University of Maine at Farmington. He received a master's degree in tax
law from Georgetown University's law school in 1995. In 2003, he received a master's degree in military law from a JAG
graduate program in Charlottesville.
His memberships included St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Washington. He was a former board member of the International
Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia Foundation.
He was a former PTA president for Highland View Elementary School in Silver Spring and coached his daughters' soccer teams.
His avocations included hiking.
Survivors include his wife of 19 years, Cecelia Steiner Smith, and two daughters, Sophia Smith and Leslie O. Smith, all of Silver
Spring; his parents, the Rev. Leslie Smith and Lois Smith of Princeton, N.J.; a brother; three sisters; a grandmother, Anna
Dougherty of Pinehurst, N.C.; and a grandfather, Leslie W. Smith of Athol, Mass.