Team First: Chris Smith Leaves a Legacy of Leadership and Service at Fort Sill

FORT SILL, Okla. — Christina “Chris” Smith spent much of her life finding value in things other people might overlook.

At the Fort Sill Recycle Center, that might mean a stack of moving boxes sturdy enough to help another military family make its next move, a ball gown set aside so a young Soldier or spouse could attend a unit formal without the added expense, or a discarded stuffed animal cleaned and given to law enforcement officers to comfort a frightened child.

But Smith’s greatest gift may have been seeing value in people, knowing the members of her team, understanding what they carried beyond the workplace and standing beside them when life became difficult.

After more than four decades as a Fort Sill civilian employee, and a connection to the installation that began with her own Army service in 1973, Smith retired in September 2026 as Fort Sill’s Qualified Recycle Program manager.

Her philosophy after all those years can be summed up simply.

“My team was my family,” Smith said.

It is easy to call that leadership. Smith lived it.

When one of her employees was dying of cancer after working until just days before his death, Smith and others across the Directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation worked with human resources to move his retirement paperwork through the system. He officially retired the day before he died, helping ensure his wife would receive an annuity rather than a one-time payment.

The Recycle team then helped arrange his funeral with military honors. When Department of Veterans Affairs benefits did not cover the full cost, members of the team helped pay the remaining expenses themselves.

When another worker assigned to the Recycle Center was found deceased at home, the team spent weeks searching for his next of kin in Pennsylvania. Once they located a family member, they helped with what came next, from clearing the home to coordinating access for the funeral home.

Those moments had nothing to do with recycling cardboard.

They had everything to do with Smith’s understanding of leadership.

“I prided myself in knowing each of my team,” she said. “Helping when needed, rearranging schedules for those who had military family members, allowing them the space and time that they needed to function.”

For Smith, taking care of the mission began with taking care of the people who accomplished it.

From Soldier to Fort Sill civilian

Smith’s Fort Sill story began more than half a century ago.

She enlisted in the Army in 1973 as an engineer illustrator, entering through the Women’s Army Corps during a period of significant change for women in military service. Assigned to Fort Sill, she eventually became a sergeant.

As the Women’s Army Corps was disbanded and women were integrated into the regular Army, Smith found herself helping others navigate a transition she was experiencing herself.

Serving in a career field then dominated by men gave her an early education in adapting, proving herself and leading through change, lessons that would follow her throughout her career.

After leaving active duty, Smith attended ROTC at Cameron University before leaving the program when she married an enlisted Soldier. The Army eventually brought the couple back to Fort Sill in 1982.

By then, Smith had earned a Bachelor of Science degree in animal science with a minor in chemistry.

Her civilian Fort Sill career began that same year at the Artillery Hunt, the installation’s stables. Initially operated as a private organization, the stables became part of Morale, Welfare and Recreation programming about a year later.

It was another transition and another opportunity to learn.

Smith worked with commanders and senior leaders throughout those years, observing different approaches to leadership and developing her own understanding of what it meant to lead.

She also learned something fundamental about MWR.

Its work was personal.

“I was in recreation for half of my career,” Smith said. “This is where you really work for Soldiers and their Families.”

Sometimes that meant building a beach, refurbishing a neighborhood swimming pool or planning community events. After the stables closed, Smith joined an engineering team during the early design phase of a major recreation project, helping move it from plans on paper to construction and, ultimately, a ribbon cutting.

There was always another challenge.

That was one reason she stayed.

“Somebody was always throwing me a challenge,” Smith said, “and I could catch it or hit it out of the park.”

An assignment she didn’t want and a program she came to love

One of those challenges arrived in August 2004.

Management reassigned Smith to the Fort Sill Recycle Center.

She freely admits she was not enthusiastic about the move.

Some members of her new workforce were not particularly enthusiastic about having her as their boss, either.

Smith entered an operation she initially viewed as primarily engineering- and machinery-driven. Some employees had reservations about working for a female manager. The adjustment took time.

“But we grew over the years and got past that,” Smith said.

Along the way, Smith began to rethink what the Recycle Program could be.

She already knew recreation was about serving Soldiers and families. She began asking why recycling could not do the same.

“I challenged myself and my team to program for Soldier and Family involvement,” she said. “We looked to see what services we could provide.”

That question helped shape the next 22 years.

As Army recycling requirements evolved and Fort Sill operated its Qualified Recycling Program, Smith worked with garrison, Defense Logistics Agency and DFMWR officials to meet regulatory requirements while preserving the program’s connection to MWR and the Fort Sill community.

At the same time, Smith and her team listened to the people they served.

The former Cash for Trash program evolved into the Sustainability Partnership. Active-duty units and other qualifying organizations could turn in recyclable material and earn recreation credits for eligible MWR activities at facilities such as Lake Elmer Thomas Recreation Area, the Patriot Club, Fort Sill Golf Course, Twin Oaks Bowling Center and the Outdoor Adventure Center.

Over time, participation expanded to include directorates and other eligible organizations, creating a broader partnership centered on reducing waste while returning benefits to the Fort Sill community.

For Smith, it represented what recycling could accomplish at its best: material diverted from the landfill, organizations encouraged to participate and benefits returned to the Soldiers, families and employees who make up the installation.

“A win-win for all,” she said.

The financial impact was substantial.

During the final decade of Smith’s tenure, the Recycle Program provided nearly $900,000 to DFMWR for programs, concerts and other Soldier and family activities. Another $175,000 supported refurbishment of the water plant at LETRA.

Many of the people enjoying those activities probably never knew recycling helped make them possible.

Smith never needed them to.

“When people attend events or go camping at LETRA and they’re having a good time with their families,” she said in an earlier interview, “that’s all that matters.”

Finding a second life for more than recyclables

Some of the center’s most memorable programs did not begin with formal studies or elaborate plans. They began with someone on the team noticing a need and asking what they could do about it.

Smith saw Soldiers buying moving boxes at retail stores while perfectly usable boxes were already passing through Fort Sill.

To her, the solution was obvious.

Families arriving at Fort Sill could bring their reusable boxes and packing paper to the center. Families preparing for their next move could pick up what they needed at no cost.

“No Soldier should ever have to buy a box if they don’t need to,” Smith said.

Then there was clothing.

For years, employees saw usable clothing discarded in collection areas. The need became especially clear after team members helped a man who had become trapped overnight in a dumpster while trying to retrieve a coat.

Afterward, the team began setting aside jackets and stuffed animals instead of letting usable items go to waste. Smith would take them home, wash them and return them to the warehouse so they could be given to people who needed them.

For a time, the program also provided cleaned stuffed animals to military police and local law enforcement officers to carry when responding to situations involving children who might need comfort.

Eventually, the center found a textile vendor that could accept clothing while also generating revenue for the program.

Another idea came directly from an employee.

When staff began noticing formal gowns among the donated textiles, Smith’s operations assistant suggested saving them.

The gowns could be cleaned and offered free to military families, a potentially significant savings for a junior enlisted Soldier or spouse preparing to attend a military ball.

“Recycle ideas are a team effort,” Smith said.

The statement says as much about her leadership as it does about recycling.

Good ideas did not have to come from the boss.

A Christmas tree and a family that needed one

Few programs captured the spirit of the Recycle team better than Trees for Troops.

Fort Sill has participated in the program for more than 18 years, helping provide live Christmas trees to military families.

The event began outdoors before eventually moving into one of the Recycle warehouses. Smith and her employees transformed the space with holiday decorations that had themselves been given a second life after being replaced at Lawton’s former Central Mall.

What could have been an ordinary warehouse became a place filled with Christmas trees, decorations and families. For many, selecting a tree became part of their Fort Sill holiday tradition.

One Christmas Eve, during a period of heavy deployments, Smith received a call from a chaplain.

A young family with a newborn had just learned their Soldier would be coming home unexpectedly on Christmas Day.

There was little time to prepare.

The chaplain asked whether Recycle could help.

For Smith and her team, there was really only one answer.

“Of course,” she recalled.

Team members delivered a Christmas tree to the family’s home, along with lights and decorations, and helped set everything up before the Soldier arrived.

No tonnage report could measure what that tree was worth to that family.

Watching generations grow

Over the decades, Smith had the rare opportunity to watch young people who once worked or learned under her grow into professionals and leaders of their own.

Teenagers who began in seasonal MWR jobs went on to positions of greater responsibility. Former riding students became Army colonels. A former lifeguard became a physician. Other MWR employees left Fort Sill and carried what they had learned to other Army installations.

“One of the most outstanding things for me was watching young people grow up over the years,” Smith said.

She had spent years learning from leaders around her. Somewhere along the way, she became one of the leaders others learned from.

Her leadership was never defined solely by position or hierarchy.

It was visible at lunches at the Patriot Club, holiday dinners, birthday celebrations and retirements. It showed in the schedules she rearranged when employees needed to care for military family members. It showed during illness, grief and the ordinary difficult days that rarely appear in performance reports.

Eventually, that care came back to her.

When Smith’s husband died unexpectedly, the people she had spent years looking after became the people she leaned on.

“My team was my family,” she said. “When my husband passed away unexpectedly, they were who I relied on for support.”

That bond made the decision to retire difficult.

Smith said one reason she remained as long as she did was because she wanted to know the people on her team would be taken care of.

She also had to imagine leaving a military community that had been part of nearly her entire adult life.

Watching another MWR leader accept a difficult new challenge eventually helped Smith look at retirement differently. She realized retirement did not have to be something she feared.

It was simply another challenge to take on.

“Learning to the end,” she said.

One unfinished fight

Smith does leave with one regret.

She wanted to see her Recycle team fully settled into its new site.

For years, employees worked in aging facilities that lacked many of the basic features Smith wanted for them. Finding and securing a better location required years of advocacy spanning multiple garrison commanders, and others have continued that effort.

The new site offers what Smith spent years seeking for her employees: better ventilation, heat, restrooms, improved lighting, personal workspace, a break area and ample yard space for operations.

To Smith, those things were never simply facility improvements.

They were another way to take care of people.

It is fitting that the unfinished business she thinks about as she leaves Fort Sill is not something she wanted for herself.

It is something she wanted for her team.

Team first

Smith’s Fort Sill story spans the Women’s Army Corps, horseback rides across the installation, decades of MWR recreation, the evolution of the Recycle Program and generations of Soldiers, family members and civilian employees.

There is very little of Fort Sill, she said, that she has not traveled on horseback. She remains passionate about the installation’s history, both the well-known stories and the smaller ones that can disappear unless someone takes the time to preserve them.

Her own story is now part of that history.

She first came to Fort Sill as a young Soldier in 1973. She returned as an Army spouse and civilian employee in 1982. Over the decades that followed, she helped build recreation opportunities, solve problems, find new purposes for discarded materials and demonstrate that a recycling program could serve people just as meaningfully as it served the environment.

When asked what she hopes people remember years from now, however, Smith does not point to dollars generated, tons diverted from landfills or programs created.

She points to her people.

“That my TEAM came first and I wasn’t afraid of being accused of ‘falling on my sword’ if necessary and that I believed in the need for DFMWR and its mission for Soldiers and their Families,” Smith said.

After more than four decades of civilian service, that may be the clearest measure of Chris Smith’s legacy.

She left Fort Sill cleaner. She helped make its MWR programs stronger. She found ways to save Soldiers and families money, turn discarded materials into opportunities and make life a little better for the people around her.

But perhaps most importantly, the people who worked for Chris Smith knew they mattered.

And that is leadership.

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