VOORHEESVILLE — Smitty’s has been at the heart of the village for over a century. One of the people who made it feel like home — Gertrude Smith — will return to the popular eatery next week to celebrate her 88th birthday with villagers she considers like family.

“My first home was with my parents in Germany; I was born in the mountains,” said Smith this week. “But this was my second home.”

She was working at a foundry, she said, when she met Frank Smith at his parents’ restaurant, Smith’s Tavern. “He made a date with me,” she said.

At that time, the restaurant was run by Frank Smith Sr. and his wife, Elizabeth, known as Lil. She endeared herself to the community by writing to local soldiers who were fighting in World War II. She sent them food, cigarettes, gum, and other supplies and regularly wrote, keeping them up to date on hometown news with her “Lil’s Newssheet.” That correspondence is now housed in the Voorheesville library.

Frank Smith Sr. took a liking to Gert. He told his son, “I want you to marry this girl; she’s a worker,” recalled Mrs. Smith.

The couple married on June 17, 1956.

“I worked there for …years. It was home,” said Mrs. Smith. “It was home for everyone.”

Describing the staff at the restaurant, Mrs. Smith said, “We had eight to 10 girls. We worked together. It was like family.”

The couple first made their home over the restaurant in the house that was built in 1901, an American foursquare on the village’s main street. It’s across the street from the school that Frank Smith had attended as a boy, and that, as a man with a masonry business, he had worked on.

Frank Smith Sr. died the year the couple married. Three years later, in 1959, Lil Smith sold the business to her son. Frank Smith Jr. died in 2006.

Frank and Gertrude Smith talked to The Enterprise in 1991 when they sold their business to Jon McClelland and John Mellen.

“It used to be a roadhouse in the first part of the century, a stopover for people from the Hilltowns who were going to market in Albany with their goods,” Frank Smith Jr. said then. “It was also a hotel then and people would stop here on their horse and buggies.”

Gert and Frank Smith gave the restaurant its two most distinguishing features — handmade pizza and a model train that runs around the perimeter of the dining room.

“My parents weren’t doing much of a business when we took over,” Mr. Smith recalled in 1991 “So we decided to start making pizza. We took a business that wasn’t going too well and started to make something out of it — that’s all due to the pizza.”

He also said, “If you get a good product, you don’t try to cheapen it by cutting corners…The whole reason why the pizza was so good is that we made our own dough, fresh every day…We made our own sauce, but didn’t grow our own tomatoes,” he said with a laugh.

The trains came about because of a stop on the couple’s honeymoon. “On our honeymoon, we stopped at a restaurant in Maryland,” Mr. Smith recalled. “The restaurant we ate in had trains running around the ceiling. I have had trains at home for years, but that’s where I first got the idea,” he said, to use the trains to “stimulate business.”

“I had a beautiful life,” said Mrs. Smith this week, attributing it to her life’s philosophy, instilled in her childhood. “I was brought up to be nice to people,” she said. Her father, a painter, liked to help people, she said. “If you are nice to people, they are nice to you,” said Mrs. Smith. “Bad comes from yourself.”

Birthday celebration

McClelland, who grew up on Sand Street in Altamont, knew Frank Smith Jr. since McClelland was 9 or 10.

“He had a masonry business and was putting in foundations. I and my brother would pester him. He’d give us a dollar to bring the heavy blocks — I could barely lift them — to where he was working.”

Then in the 1970s and 1980s, McClelland, an accountant, did the books and tax returns for Smith’s Tavern.

“That’s when I really got to know them,” he said of the Smiths. “They were well loved, well respected. Their help thought the world of them…I’ve heard nothing but good things about them over the years.”

McClelland and his business partner are now at the point that the Smiths were at in 1991 — after 25 years of owning and running the restaurant, they are ready to sell the business and retire.  They are selling to Stewart’s Shops; the company plans to put a gas station and convenience store on the site.

“When I first told Gert, she said, ‘My Frankie would say to sell it, retire and enjoy yourself — and take only a check, no spread-out payments.’ That’s Gert,” said McClelland.

He went on to say that the Smiths had no children. “Gert would say the tavern was their baby and the employees were their family,” said McClelland.

Gertrude Smith will be at Smitty’s on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 5 and 6, from 1 to 4 p.m. each day. “I think there will be a feeling of — I don’t know the right words — it will be quite emotional,” said McClelland. “It’s her birthday weekend so I encourage people to bring pictures and memories to share.”

Mrs. Smith will be traveling with John Stobar, a neighbor in Boynton Beach, Florida who looks after her, allowing her to stay in her own home.

“It may be her last trip,” said Stobar. “She’s very excited about it. It’s all she talks about.”

He is making a banner for people to sign when they visit Mrs. Smith. And he is also collecting old photographs for the visitors to look at.

Gert Smith concluded of Smitty’s, “I put my life in there. I had a great marriage. We had great customers.”