Spotlight on Sooner Rotarian Gaylynn Smith
Gaylynn Smith has been a Sooner Rotarian for 1 year. She is on the Ways and Means committee. The fellowship and support of the Norman community is what she loves most about Sooner Rotary. Gaylynn’s job is VP/CFO with OU Federal Credit Union. The credit union provides personal financial services. She says about her work, “Each account holder is also a shareholder. I have over 7,000 bosses. We are a small financial institution providing services to a ‘select’ membership.” The one thing she wants her Rotary friends to know about her is that when she does something, she gives it her best and she expects the same from others.
A favorite quote of Gaylynn’s is from Thomas Jefferson. “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”
Gaylynn has been married to Roger Smith for 30 years and her children are Frank and Jesse and she says, “Yes, they are oulaws!” Other family members include Buster, the basset hound and Mandy, the lab.
Gaylynn enjoys visiting with her friends, taking trips on the Harleys, and camping/hiking. When she’s by herself, she enjoys gardening, mowing, or target shooting.
She is currently caught in left brain/right brain conflict while working toward her LPC , which will allow her to complete her whole brain training as she moves from thinking about finance to thinking about children.
Gaylynn is a great music lover and she loves to listen to AC/DC, Ozzie, and ZZ Top while working out at the gym. She switches to classical while researching or studying and chooses Janis Joplin, Led Zepplin, or James Taylor when relaxing.
Recent reading includes Toys by James Patterson and Sixkill by Robert Parker. She enjoyed the movie “Inception” with Leonardo Di Caprio because this science fiction piece could easily be reality in today’s world.
If she could choose to study something interesting, it would be to study why people do the things they do. The least interesting think she can think of to study is the mechanics of an automobile.
Some interesting places she has visited outside of Norman are the bat caves in Freedom, OK, Bishops Castle in Pueblo, CO, Denali Mountain in Alaska. She has traveled as far away as Ireland, would love to go to Hawaii, and if she could live somewhere else for awhile, it would be in South Dakota.
Other things to know about Gaylynn include that her most favorite place to be is at her log cabin in the middle of nowhere, quet and serene, deer in the yard, and hubby at her side. On weekends you might find her digging in the dirt or sipping a glass of wine from her rocking chair. She loves spoiling her grandbaby. Cookie Dough ice cream must be included in her favorite meal and she loves to play Pente and Scrabble. Normanite Moira Waterbury is someone Gaylynn truly admires for her compassion and selflessness. In high school, Gaylynn played piano, was in drama and debate, and enjoyed parties. She is curious why God made men and women so different.
Gaylynn believes a responsibility she has is to help keep our innocent children safe. She often daydreams about establishing a community for homeless, abused, traumatized children to be safe, and learn the skills to survive in this world. First on her list of words describing herself is compassion.
A good title for a book about herself would be “Never Quit Learning; Always Ask Questions”. One of the things that Gaylynn would like to work on this year is to “accept the things she cannot change, to have the courage to change the things she can, and to gain wisdom to know the difference.”