The phone buzzed shortly before 8:30 last Wednesday morning with a call from our son.
Any time you see your adult child’s name pop up on your phone early on a weekday morning as he drives to work you assume the worst.
Had he been in a wreck?
Had he lost his job?
Had he and his girlfriend been evicted from their apartment in Raleigh?
It had to be bad news, right? It’s the way parents think whether their child is 7, 27 or 57.
It was bad news, alright. Tragic news, in fact.
He wanted to know if I had heard that Charlotte Smith had been charged with first degree murder for allegedly killing her husband, Daine, at their home in Elizabethtown.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
He told me what he knew, which wasn’t any more than the basic information. He then reported for work, but wanted to let him know if I heard any more.
I joined The Bladen Journal staff about a month to cover sports, but, oftentimes, sports just aren’t important. This is one of those times.
After putting on my former news reporter’s hat for a brief spell I learned that, indeed, 45-year-old Charlotte Brandy Smith had been charged with first degree murder for allegedly killing 42-year-old Aaron Daine Smith. She had been arrested in Montgomery County early Wednesday morning and was in the Bladen County Detention Center by Wednesday evening.
It’s difficult to put into words how stunning that news was. The Smiths were friends and former colleagues at Bladen Online..
Daine’s father, Alan, installed my HVAC system at the house I had built in Cape Owen Manor near Dublin in 1991. That system was still running strong when we sold the house in 2021. Daine followed his dad into the business and continued the family tradition of providing quality service.
I remember Daine as a young whippersnapper running around Dixie Youth Baseball fields when I coached in the Elizabethtown league.
I met Charlotte in the mid 2010s when she joined Bladen Online as a sales and marketing representative. She was energetic, determined, kind and helpful. She was always like that and would go out of her way to make things better for everyone.
Charlotte allowed me to continue to work part time for Bladen Online after she bought the business from founder Robert Hester. I posted stories and photos, updated the main pages and wrote a bit. She always was open to new ideas that would make Bladen Online the go-to news source in Bladen County.
The last time I spoke to Charlotte was in early April when she wanted to know if I wanted to oversee Bladen Online. It had been a difficult year or two for her personally and for the company with smaller budgets and limited staffing. If I didn’t want to oversee the operation, she said, then she had an offer from Champion Media to purchase the business.
“If you’re satisfied with the offer, I’d take it,” I remember telling Charlotte because I had no desire to get back into the daily grind of gathering news after 40 years. “I know it’s been stressful for you and if it will help you sleep better, then I would call them back and do it.”
Charlotte called the next day with news that she had sold the business to Champion Media, the parent company of The Bladen Journal. I was hopeful that she could relax, re-energize and enjoy life.
I don’t know what happened Tuesday night at the home off Woodhouse Drive or what led to the events that unfolded and I don’t want to. Law enforcement and the legal system will determine the case, as it should be.
There are plenty of rumors out there about last Tuesday’s shooting. Some may be true. Some may not. I don’t plan to share any that I’ve heard. To me, it doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that the lives of two families have been devastated, one person that I was blessed to call a friend tragically has lost his life and another friend has had her life changed forever.
In sports, there is a winner and there is a loser. In this case, there are no winners and we all are losers.