Craig McCormick Smith was sick, and his oldest daughter was getting ready for a scuba-diving trip in Papua New Guinea. She jokingly told him nothing could get her to cancel the vacation, but his response was serious: “Go.”

Though Smith spent decades working hard and building successful trucking and real estate businesses, his true joys were outside the office. He was a lover of adventures, of journeys abroad and new experiences. If he could have kept traveling until his last breath, he would have. He wanted the same for his children.

So Eliza Smith Steinmeier went to Papua New Guinea. She didn’t think her father would have liked scuba diving much, but he could have spent all day fishing on those waters. He would have loved learning about the local culture. When she got the call that he died, it wasn’t a question whether she would head back — “I know he wouldn’t have wanted me to come home,” she said.

In his work life, “I think he was a hard-ass,” Smith Steinmeier said. “He ran a small business; you have to keep a tight ship. … In his personal life, he was one of the most generous people I’ve ever met.”

Smith, a commercial real estate developer who also used to run a family trucking business in Baltimore, died June 7 of lung cancer. He was 82.

He was born Feb. 18, 1943, the oldest of two children born to Stuart “Stu” Moore Smith and Edith McCormick Smith. He and his sister, Judith “Judy” Smith Mowlds, spent most of their childhood in small-town Pennsylvania before moving to Baltimore in 1957 as his father grew the family business.

Smith was initially enrolled in Baltimore City College, but he found the school far too big and busy. Instead, he spent four years at Loyola High School. He wasn’t the biggest academic, but he participated in just about every sport available to him.

He was especially good at football, like his father, and played offensive and defensive tackle. A former coach later told Smith’s loved ones that “he was the meanest football player he’d ever coached.”

Smith continued playing football at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, graduating in 1965. While in college, he married his first wife, but they were divorced a few years later. In 1969, after his father died, Smith took over Stuart M. Smith Inc., the family trucking company. He spent more than a decade operating the business, mostly delivering Tastykake products.

A few years later, he met Elaine Perfetto Smith, a neighbor who had just moved to Baltimore from Rhode Island. She was also divorced, and the two became quick friends and golf buddies. They married in 1974, and their first child, Eliza, was born two years later.

Craig Smith was nervous about having a child. “He was a very devoted father once he got over his anxiety about being one,” his wife said. “He was very gentle, very kind, and established within himself a priority to do the very best he could for his family.”

In 1980, they had their second daughter, Christina Fenton, and soon after adopted their son, Kevin Smith.

The family made it a priority to have dinner together every night. Smith was a bit of a disciplinarian, and he was especially protective of his daughters, family said. But inside he was a big softie, they said, who loved cleaning the house with his children just because it gave them the opportunity to chat. He taught them to golf, fish and ski, and they had many memorable trips to their vacation house on the Eastern Shore.

“He grew up with a lot of adult responsibilities from a young age, so he kind of went the other way with us,” Fenton said.

He had a tradition of sending Fenton roses on her birthday each year, with the number of flowers matching her new age. He’d send them to school, so she’d pick them up from the front office. He continued to send the bouquets probably until she was married.

The family often vacationed with Smith’s good friend, Tom Bozzuto, who fondly recalled smoking cigars, drinking bourbon and fishing together. He described his friend as a “real man’s man, with a laugh that always sounded like you caught him taking the last cookie out of the jar.”

In 1982, Smith reconnected with a high school classmate, Pat Creaney, and they decided to start a real estate development business together. The Creaney & Smith Group was born, and the duo acquired and developed more than 7 million square feet of commercial property throughout the mid-Atlantic.

Smith came off as a “very hard-nosed, tough businessman,” though it was mostly a facade, Creaney said. Smith was good with numbers and led the operations side of the company. He also brought family into the business and worked for many years with Fenton.

Smith was “very thorough, very detailed and very straightforward, and honest,” his business partner said. “There wasn’t a dishonest bone in his body.”

The company expanded in 2006 to bring in additional partners, including Smith’s son-in-law, Matt Steinmeier, who purchased the company with a colleague six years later. One of the first things Smith told Steinmeier was to “always follow the money” — to manage finances carefully and make sure there was enough for the next payment.

“He liked the whole picture of development,” Steinmeier said. “There’s finding the land, all of the entitlements to be able to build it, going through that process with the government, getting the financing together, actually doing the construction, overseeing that. As a developer, you get to have yourself involved in each one of those facets.”

Outside of the office, Smith maintained close relationships with Steinmeier and his other son-in-law, Eric Fenton.

“He was incredibly welcoming and wanted nothing more than to relish being together with family and friends,” Eric Fenton said.

In retirement, Smith filled his days with his favorite activities — traveling, fly fishing, golfing and spending time with loved ones. In 2017, Smith and his wife moved to Naples, Florida, to enjoy the nicer weather.

As a lifelong athlete, Smith found aging difficult to accept, so he became a serial hobbyist. He took up woodworking and made cutting boards.

He also enjoyed playing with and teasing his five grandchildren, all boys. They called him “Rop Pop,” and he embraced the name so much that he put it on a customized license plate.

He grew softer as he grew older, his children said, and always had a fun anecdote to share. He embellished on many occasions, said his son, Kevin Smith. But, unlike decades ago, his kids now had smartphones to fact check whatever he was saying.

“Damn technology. You can’t just tell a story anymore,” he would grumble when corrected.

One of the “larger-than-life” stories Smith often told was about him walking to and from school in the snow uphill both ways. His kids always dismissed it as a nonsense cliché, his son said, until they visited his Pennsylvania hometown. Smith had lived on the bottom of a hill, and his school was up and over on the other side.

The kids had to give it to him, Kevin Smith said: “He just smiled and said, ‘I told you.’”

There is a memorial service planned Oct. 25 from 3-5 p.m. at Bears Paw Country Club in Naples.

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