Honoree Lessie Smithgall

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2008 GAELA Award for Arts Philanthrophy

Mrs. Lessie Smithgall, inaugural honoree for the new GAELA Arts Philanthropy Award, at her home in Gainesville, Georgia, in the spring of 2007, at age 96.  The GAELA Awards Committee is pleased to honor Mrs. Smithgall's legacy of giving to the arts.

The adage you're as young as you feel certainly applies to Mrs. Lessie Smithgall.  Lessie still endeavors to attend several Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performances each year with family or friends, and the Atlanta Opera as well.  When home in Gainesville, she can be seen attending concerts and theater performances.  While in Maine she frequently attends the summer concert series at Kneisel Hall.

Mrs. Smithgall has been a member of the board of directors for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, appointed by the governor to the board of directors of the Georgia Council for the Arts, a board of trustees member of Wodruff Arts Alliance and honorary trustee of Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival.  Lessie was the organizer and first chairman of the Georgia Sponsors for the Atlanta Symphony.  She was also the organizer of Theatre Wings and Theatre Wings Endowment, an Alliance Theatre Support Group.  She was instrumental in organizing Georgia Citizens for the Arts and the Gainesville Arts Council.

Mrs. Smithgall is also a founding member of the Robert Shaw Room, the existence of which was made possible in 1985 by a generous gift from Lessie Bailey Smithgall to honor Music Director Emeritus Robert Shaw.  In addition to this gift, the philanthropic efforts of Mrs. Smithgall have directly benefited the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Opera, the Gainesville Theatre Alliance, The Gainesville Symphony Orchestra, The Arts Council of Gainesville, Gainesville ProMusica, Northwinds Symphonic Band, as well as Kneisel Hall in Maine, the American Symphony, the Metropolitan Opera and many more.
 
Mrs. Lessie B. Smithgall and Gov. Joe Frank Harris at the occasion of Lessie’s “swearing in” for the Georgia Council for the Arts in 1985, also pictured are to her right are her husband Charles A. Smithgall, Jr., sons John F. Smithgall, Charles A. Smithgall III, and her sister Sue Sullivan.


Announcement for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Ball 1993. Mrs. Smithgall was honorary chairman  and is shown “directing” Robert Griggs, Jay Levine, and Earl Patton, all seated, and standing Bill Graves, Yoel Levi and Tom Ross.
 






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