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Obituary: Florence Dodds Smith / Unqualified success in male-dominated petroleum industry
Saturday, December 01, 2001 By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Florence Dodds Smith, an elegantly dressed entrepreneur in what she called a "dirty overalls industry" and the first woman elected to serve as president of the Petroleum Equipment Institute, died Nov. 23 at the Alterra Clare Bridge Care Home in Cheswick. She was 83 and had Alzheimer's disease.
"She was a remarkable woman," said Howard Upton, former executive vice president of PEI, an international trade association with 900 members in 58 countries. "She was not elected in deference to the feminist movement. She was elected because she ran her company well and was highly respected in the industry and was obviously very intelligent."
Mrs. Smith, formerly of McCandless, started in the petroleum industry as a secretary. By 1948, she was selling hydraulic lifts, air compressors and gasoline pumps to service station operators for a Downtown company called Stover and Rust.
"There weren't any women selling petroleum equipment in those days," said Harvey Davis, real estate manager for the Guttman Group.
A year before moving into petroleum sales, Mrs. Smith divorced Hans Kellner of Scarsdale, N.Y., whom she had married in 1944. But she kept his name and put it on the business she founded with $1,000 in 1951. At 33, she rented an office in East Liberty and hired her own secretary.
"She ran it on a shoestring while working as a single mother," said her son, Hans Dodds Kellner of Arlington, Texas.
A year later, she met David O. Smith at a party. They married in 1952. Mr. Smith closed his welding company to work with his wife. For the next 41 years, they were inseparable.
Mrs. Smith, who admitted that she was a workaholic, frequently went to her Hampton office on weekends to prepare for the coming week.
When PEI marked the 30th anniversary of its founding at a meeting in St. Louis in 1980, Mrs. Smith was the only woman in a room with 79 men.
In 1993, Kellner Equipment was sold to Reitz Oil.
After graduating from Oakmont High School in 1935, she attended Grove City College for a year, then took a job at a local employment agency.
After World War II, she was secretary to the treasurer of Blaw Knox Steel, then to the president of Scaife Corp. By 1948, she went to work for Stover and Rust, where she began selling petroleum equipment.
Mrs. Smith belonged to Bakerstown Presbyterian Church. She and her husband were members of Wildwood Golf Club, the Pittsburgh Athletic Association and Wanango Country Club in Franklin, Venango County.
In addition to her son, she is survived by a brother, the Rev. Dr. David W. Dodds of McHenry, Ill., and three grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held at noon today in H.P. Brandt Funeral Home, 1032 Perry Highway, Ross. Entombment will follow in Allegheny County Memorial Park, McCandless.
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