While George held the pen, The Smith Family was a dual engine. Virginia Smith was not merely the inspiration for the strip but its editor and co-writer. In an era when creative partnerships of this scale were rare in syndication, the Smiths maintained a formidable tenure in The Boston Globe, appearing daily from the early 1950s into the mid-1990s.

The collaboration kept the strip an old familiar friend to millions, grounded in a shared voice that only a four-decade marriage — and eleven children — could produce. The kids on the page were not invented types. They were a household, drawn from the inside.

We think it will be evident to our readers, after they’ve finished the following account by GEORGE SMITH, how he and his wife, VIRGINIA, have managed to come up with ideas for THE SMITH FAMILY comic strip over the past 40 years and have thus accomplished a very rare feat in our profession.