View source for Jim Lee Smithson

==Background==

Smithson was born in Marshall to Jack Smithson (1908–1973) and the former Ola Francis (1912–2003). In 1960, he graduated from Marshall High School. In 1971, he obtained his pharmacy degree from the [[University of Louisiana at Monroe]] (then Northeastern Louisiana University). For a time in the early 1970s he had a pharmacy in Marshall. From 1981 to 2006, Smithson was a pharmacist at Jefferson Regional Hospital in Pine Bluff in Jefferson County. Divorced from Beverly Smithson (born 1949), he has two daughters, Kimberly Ragland of Marshall and Kristie Ragland of Conway in Faulkner County, Arkansas, and four grandchildren.