Matthew J. Smith Sr., a retired real estate appraiser who had been a newspaper reporter, died Wednesday of lung cancer at a daughter's Fallston home. He was 77.
Mr. Smith, the son of a U.S. Treasury Department employee and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Anneslie.
He was a graduate of Towson Catholic High School and attended the University of Baltimore and the University of Maryland, College Park.
During the Korean War, he was drafted into the Army and was a graduate of the Army Dental Technician School at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. After serving in Germany as an assistant to a dental surgeon, he was discharged with the rank of corporal.
From 1950 to 1965, Mr. Smith worked as a reporter for the Baltimore News Post and later the News American, serving for nine years as chief of the newspaper's Baltimore County bureau.
In 1965, he left the newspaper when he became executive secretary and lobbyist for the Maryland Railroad Association.
When the organization disbanded in 1977, Mr. Smith became a residential real estate appraiser and worked in that field until retiring in 2002.
A resident of Forest Hill for the past decade, Mr. Smith had served as the first president of the Maryland Chapter of the Appraisal Institute in 1991 after the merger of the Society of Real Estate Appraisers and the American Institute of Appraisers. He also had been a longtime director of the organization.
Mr. Smith had coached Little League baseball and had been a coach with the Towsontown Recreation Council.
He was an Orioles and Ravens fan and enjoyed collecting decoys. He also was an avid Maryland history buff and liked exploring the state's back roads.
Mr. Smith had been a member of the Towson Elks Lodge No. 469 and was a former communicant, lector and member of the parish council of St. Pius X Roman Catholic Church in Rodgers Forge.
He was a parishioner of St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, 533 East Jarrettsville Road, Forest Hill, where a Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Surviving are two sons, Matthew J. Smith Jr. of Fallston and Jeffrey J. Smith of Forest Hill; two daughters, Margaret Kimberly Smith of Millers and Tracey Ann Grossman of Fallston; a brother, Arthur J. Smith of Towson; and 11 grandchildren. Another son, Paul Scott Smith Sr., died in 2001. His marriage to the former Mary-Ellen Peters ended in divorce.