By the time he had reached his early 20s, Rev. Clay Smith ’68 seemed headed in a clear direction. His undergraduate years at Pfeiffer College, where he had majored in religion and philosophy (now Religion and Practical Theology), had paved the way for him to pursue seminary studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, TN.

With an M.Div. degree in hand, Smith could take steps to become a United Methodist pastor, serving a denomination he’d been a part of since his childhood on a family farm in rural Alamance (N.C.) County. There was just one problem: As his time at Vanderbilt was winding down, in the early 1970s, Smith had come to doubt whether a career in Christian ministry was really for him. When the late Ruth Fussell Smith ’66, a fellow Pfeiffer alumna and Smith’s wife at the time, realized her husband was frozen by indecision, she proposed a radical solution.

“She said, ‘Well, we could join the Peace Corps, and during our time with them, you could think about your future,’” Smith recalled during a break at Redbud Organic Farm, which he and Nancy Joyner, his current wife, have owned and managed since 2009. “After looking into it, that’s exactly what we did.” This was back in 1971, when the Peace Corps was about 10 years old, having been established by an executive order of President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963).

As a presidential candidate, Kennedy had challenged young people like Smith to devote “a part of their lives to living and working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.” It was a noble call that appealed to their idealism, their adventurism, and, often, their willingness to adapt to the most challenging of circumstances as they provided sorely needed assistance.

The Peace Corps assignment for Smith and his wife certainly bore this out. It charged them with working on a multifaceted development project in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Between June of 1971 and October of 1973, the couple lived and worked amid the stark poverty of a small village where there was no running water and subsistence farming was the norm.

After receiving several months of training in farming techniques and in learning Marathi, the official language of Maharashtra (he still speaks it to Indian immigrants he meets in N.C.), Smith helped introduce new varieties of rice that would produce considerably greater yields than the type locals had traditionally planted during the summer monsoon season. 

Smith also helped increase levels of irrigation needed for planting “all kinds of stuff” other than rice during the non-monsoon months, when temperatures never dipped below 60 degrees. This meant digging a deep well that wouldn’t go dry — something a village leader supported if local workers were strong enough to do the work involved.

“My folks can’t do that work because they don’t have enough food to keep them healthy enough,” Smith recalls the leader telling him. “If you can find enough grain that I can give these people, we can dig a well.”

Smith would do just that, and 20 village workers, fortified with a sufficient number of calories from grain Smith had provided them, came up with the requisite well.

So, what happened after Smith concluded his stint in the Peace Corps? His outlook changed: “It gave me an appreciation for all that being a citizen of the world entailed,” he said. “And I gained first-hand knowledge of the struggles that many people go through. When you work for the Peace Corps, you gain a whole new perspective. You don’t get worried if egg prices go up.”

Shortly after returning to the United States, Smith began the process of becoming a United Methodist minister. The initial doubts he had about entering that line of work were replaced with a clarity of focus: Having addressed the challenges faced by rural India, he would do similar work in rural North Carolina and nearby states, first by pastoring United Methodist churches and, then, directing a United Methodist Church-affiliated mission/service organization called the Hinton Rural Life Center in Hayesville, N.C.

Smith worked for 25 years at Hinton before taking on his current work at Redbud Organic Farm which sits on what was part of the family farm where he grew up. From the beginning, organic practices were used, and the process to become certified organic was completed in 2009. Smith and Joyner sell their produce and plants at area farmers markets and to local co-ops and a few local restaurants.

That he’s lived a full, often adventurous life of service owes much to his time at Pfeiffer.

“It was just a really great place,” he said. “I’m so glad I was there.”