Remembering Sportsman’s Shop co-owner Marie Smith

From staff reports
Locals will have an opportunity to support “Marie’s boys” — her husband Bob and her sons, Wes and Brad, who own the Sportsman’s Shop and make up the crew of the charter fishing boat, “The Mariah” — at a weekend fundraiser, Nov. 15-16 at the shop in Glen Arbor.

Door prizes will be awarded for every $10 spent or donated. Prizes will include a weekend stay at The Homestead resort, two ice-fishing trips this winter, a 2009 fishing excursion aboard “The Mariah,” meals from local restaurants, a Becky Thatcher necklace and earrings, and more gifts from local merchants.

Marie Smith passed away on Oct. 22, five days after her 51st birthday. She was born in Detroit in 1957 and was buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Empire.
The Leelanau Enterprise reported that approximately 180 people turned out for a spontaneous luncheon in late October organized by the owners of restaurants in Glen Arbor and fellow community members. Many more attended her Mass of Christian Burial at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Empire.
“It was really a grassroots effort,” Bonnie Nescot told Alan Campbell of the Enterprise, adding that community members were already missing the warm smile and energy they loved.

The Smiths are known especially well for their work at the Sportsman’s Shop, the fishing tournaments Bob facilitates, the group of die-hard fishermen that congregate around the shop, and the upscale line of clothing Marie added after they acquired the business.

As the Glen Arbor Sun reported in May 2002, “Marie Smith love[d] everything about the Sportsman’s Shop except the wigglers. ‘They’re just too BUGGY,’ she [said] with a laugh and a shudder.” Even before the Smiths acquired the Sportsman’s Shop, they were already Glen Arbor locals. We reported in 2002, “Their winter home is on Fritz Road and they spend the summer on Lake Michigan in the cottage Luster Smith built for his family in the 1950s. Bob Smith has been the captain of the charter boat ‘Mariah’ since 1992, and has been booking through the Sportsman’s Shop [since 1997]. In fact, Bob [was] already famous in the pages of the Sun as a slugger for the Wag’s softball team … He once clobbered four homers in one game! ‘I’m retired from softball now,’ says Bob, ‘because I’m so busy catchin’ fish!’”

Bob tired of his work as a financial planner in downstate Plymouth, and Marie supported the decision to move up north and buy the Sportsman’s Shop.
“I loved to fish, and she knew it,” Bob told the Enterprise.
Indeed, Bob and Marie owe their relationship to outdoor sports. “I met her right after college. She was a figure skater, and I was a big hockey player,” Bob said.
Campbell of the Enterprise wrote, “Until … weeks ago, when a series of blood clots circulated through her body, Mrs. Smith was accompanying her ‘boys’ to the Lake Michigan boat launch in Glen Arbor before the sun came up, saw them off, and worried while they were on the big water.”

“Thank you from Wes, Brad and Bob,” Bob Smith told the county newspaper. “To all the people who have brought food over the last four weeks, and everything else they have done. I don’t know what we would do without them.”

Family friends Annette Lewis and Steve Baker have filled in to run the Sportsman Shop in the weeks after her passing.