They've donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to students, teachers and others in Nelson County, but Gordon and Mary Beth Smyth shrug it off as simply a pleasant hobby.

"As Mary Beth says, we don't have a boat, so we've got to do something with this money," Gordon Smyth said with a laugh. "We decided to give it away."

Modest and self-effacing, the Smyths are the epitome of unsung heroes, which is why yesterday they were presented with the 2008 Unsung Virginians Award, sponsored by the Virginia, Maryland & Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives. The ceremony was held at the Omni Richmond Hotel.

"The most distinctive thing about the Smyths is the quiet fashion in which they go about helping people in Nelson County," said George H. Krieger, executive director of the Nelson County Community Development Foundation. "They've never really received recognition for the amount of impact they've had on our community, and they're just fine with that."

The Smyths met in the late 1940s at $1-a-meal dinners at a boarding house in Waynesboro, where Mary Beth was working as a public schoolteacher after graduating from Mary Baldwin College and Gordon was starting out at DuPont. They moved all over the country for more than 40 years with Gordon's job, but they kept ties to Virginia and purchased a condominium at Wintergreen in rural Nelson. When Gordon retired

from DuPont in 1990, they moved full-time to Wintergreen and established a foundation to start giving away money. The Smyths moved to a retirement community in Charlottesville in recent years.

They finance four partial four-year scholarships each year for graduating seniors at Nelson County High School and have had 48 students graduate so far. In addition, they sponsor sabbaticals for teachers and award 10 prizes of $1,000 each year to school system staff -- including custodians and bus drivers -- who are nominated by their co-workers. They also provide grants for classroom projects and once had a truckload of beach sand -- shells and all -- delivered to young students from the mountain county who'd never visited the shore.

"We're interested in kids, and we're interested in education," said Mary Beth Smyth, 82, who used to volunteer in the Nelson schools. "And it sort of helps keep us young."

A stipulation of the scholarship is that the recipients meet the Smyths for lunch twice a year to provide an update on how things are going at college.

"Mary Beth talks about, 'How's your social life?' and I say, 'How are your grades?'" Gordon Smyth, 80, said with a laugh. "We're good cop and bad cop."

The Smyths get invited to graduations and weddings and receive Christmas cards with the latest photographs of the newest members of their scholarship recipients' families. The Smyths also often see teachers whom they sent on sabbaticals, which are designed to further their education and keep them in Nelson. A condition of the grant is the teachers agree to teach in Nelson schools for at least one more year.

Drama teacher Diana Driver says the Smyths changed her life. She was new to Nelson County High in the late 1990s and wasn't excited to have moved from a larger school division. Then the Smyths began offering teacher sabbaticals. She proposed a European trip to see Shakespeare's birthplace, as well as Italy and Germany. The Smyths sent her for 2½ weeks, and she has been using what she learned on that trip in the classroom ever since.

"There's no way I could have done this without them," Driver said of the Smyths. "They're an inspiration."

When a colleague asked Driver to write down the five most influential people in her life, the Smyths were in her top five, along with her parents and her high school drama teacher.

The Smyths, who also provided the seed money to transform the abandoned old Nelson High School into an office building housing the county's social service agencies, dismiss such high praise.

"It's been a lot of fun," Gordon Smyth said of their philanthropy. "We have a great time."
Contact Bill Lohmann at (804) 649-6639 or wlohmann@timesdispatch.com.