Another captain of Smith Bros. empire dies

Lincoln Smith, who was president of Smith Bros. of Port Washington — the company that operated the landmark Smith Bros. Fish Shanty restaurant and fish market in downtown Port and the family’s commercial fishing operations — died Thursday, Oct. 1, at Froedtert Menomonee Falls Hospital.

Smith’s death comes less than three weeks after his cousin Lloyd Smith died on Sept. 11.

While Lloyd Smith was widely known as the longtime manager of the  family restaurant and its Harborside hotel, Lincoln Smith was the calming voice behind the scenes.

“Smith Brothers Port Washington was the mainstay business,” Smith’s cousin Ned Huwatschek, who worked in the family business, said, “and he was a very steadying influence.”

The good times included the years when buses of tourists would flock to Port Washington to enjoy fish dinners and buy fresh and smoked fish to take home, Huwatschek said.

“People used to come from Milwaukee Sunday after Sunday,” he said. “We couldn’t catch enough fish. During Lent, Port Washington was booming like there was no tomorrow.”

The tough times included a fire that burned down Smith Bros. restaurant in 1953 and a botulism scare that Huwatschek said had a crippling effect on the family’s canning operations in the early 1960s.

“He and the board of directors steered us through that, not knowing what the future was,” Huwatschek said.

And when the family decided to sell off its businesses in the late 1980s, Smith helmed that move as well, he said. 

“A lot of that fell on Lincoln as president,” Huwatschek said.

Smith, 94, was also an officer in the family’s other corporations, which controlled the family’s California restaurants, Harborside hotel, Sheboygan fishery, wholesale food service operations and real estate holdings, Huwatschek said.

“He was an accountant. He took care of the books for all of them,” he said.

Smith didn’t start out at the top of the heap, however. He began his career as a child, cleaning “gunk off the hooks used to catch the lake trout,” his son Brian said.

He later tended the fishing nets, fished and worked for the fishery.

During World War II, he served in the Navy and later in the National Guard, then entered college using the GI Bill.

His parents Oliver and Leota told him, “We need an accountant, so study accounting,” Brian Smith said, so Lincoln Smith did that, earning a degree from Carroll College.

“From that point on, that was his job. He was the office guy,” Smith’s son Kirby said. 

In addition to crunching numbers, Smith was also in charge of marketing the family businesses, he added.

“When I was a kid, my mom (Maxine) and I used to go out once a year and paint billboards,” Kirby Smith said, noting that way the business didn’t have to hire a painter.

But Smith didn’t stay in his office all the time. At least one Sunday a month, he staffed the family’s fish market.

“The idea was when people came in, there should be a Smith on hand to sell them their fish,” Kirby Smith said. “People came in and were expecting to see a Smith.”

“I think he enjoyed doing the customer service,” Brian Smith added.

Smith took pride in being part of the Smith family legacy — a legacy that stretched back to 1848 when patriarch Gilbert Smith started a fishing business on Lake Michigan with a small boat and seine net at Amsterdam in Sheboygan County.

“He was very proud of that,” Brian Smith said. 

Kirby Smith noted that his father was not only proud of Smith Bros. but of the city his family’s business came to represent — and of the Fish Day celebration of Port’s commercial fishing heritage.

“As the iconic business downtown, he wanted to see Port Washington be successful, Fish Day to be successful and the business to be successful,” he said. “He worked for all that.”

The Smith family decided to sell its businesses in the late 1980s, a recognition that the younger generation wasn’t going to take the reins and the older generation was preparing to retire, Huwatschek said.

Smith opposed that decision, Kirby Smith said.

“I don’t think there was any question. He was very upset and voted against selling the business. He wanted to keep it going,” he said.

But he was outvoted and decided to retire in 1988 when the sales were finalized.

Although Smith was known for the family business, he had his hand in other activities in the city as well, his family said.

He was a member of the Port Rotary Club and the Masonic Lodge, and he devoted years to managing Union Cemetery on the city’s west side.

A complete obituary for Mr. Smith can be under the opituaries tab.