Louisiana Tech's Smith remembered as passionate communicator, laugh spreader

Friends, family and colleagues remembered Tonya Oaks Smith Monday as an innovative and passionate communicator who helped modernize Louisiana Tech University’s voice through difficult times and elicited smiles wherever she went.

Smith, Tech’s executive director of communications and marketing, died April 4 at the age of 50, just weeks after being diagnosed with a grade IV glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor.

A capacity crowd and then some packed University Hall on Tech campus Monday morning as a service was held to celebrate Smith’s life and legacy.

“She’s really going to be missed here,” university President Les Guice said. “She had a creative way of thinking about things. She really revamped our whole communications, the strategies we used around digital media and video. She would go out and find those gems on our campus that may never show up on the cover of something and tell their story.”

Smith served as the head of Tech’s communications from late 2017 until the end, as Guice said she insisted on putting together a presentation for him from the hospital — one that he will deliver in Houston this week.

Before coming to Tech, Smith worked in communications at Henderson State in Arkadelphia and the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, where she earned a masters degree in communication. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Louisiana State University. During a brief first stint in Ruston, Smith wrote for the Ruston Daily Leader.

She was married to Keith Smith and had one daughter, Rebekah Marshall, 25, known as “ Marley.” Smith proudly became known as “Marley’s mom” to many, especially online.

“She is the most caring person I’ve ever met,” Marley said. “Not just caring for family — she genuinely cares about all people. That’s something I’ve admired about her since I was little, the fact she can make anybody in a room feel welcomed, feel like they have a space where they belong.”

Kristen Oaks White, Smith’s younger sister by 14 years, was like Smith’s “first baby,” White said.

“I was four or five when she left home and went to LSU,” White said. “She would always write me letters every week. I’ll never forget I’d run down to the mailbox to go get them, because she’d tell me everything that was going on.”

Smith’s tenure at Tech saw the arrival of multiple crises that affected the university, from the April 2019 Ruston tornado to the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Laura in 2020.

“We have to stay on top of our communications during those times, and she did,” Guice said. “She really helped me get out, in some cases, daily emails and communications to campus.”

It was fitting, then, that when Smith went back to school for her doctorate degree, her dissertation would be titled “Guiding Organizations Through Transformational Change and Crisis.”

After some three years of study, Smith would submit her dissertation just before receiving her diagnosis. Guice conferred to Smith her doctorate of education at her home, surrounded by family.

That diploma, along with the cap and gown and traditional Louisiana Tech graduation brick, were on display at Monday’s service.

To many, the contributions Smith made to university communications at Tech and elsewhere will be her lasting impact. To her family, there are other traits they hold dear as well.

“She was wickedly funny, but she had the most electric laugh,” White said. “Her nose would crinkle up to her eyebrows, and it was a real cackle. Even if you weren’t laughing, it was contagious.”

“She’s taught me how to be a good person,” Marley said. “ She’s taught me what it means to be a friend, and be a true friend — not just say you’re friends with somebody, but mean it. Be there when they need you to be there. I’m a better person for having been her daughter.”