Honoring Richard Stowers Smith
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
It is with great sadness that HMI learned of the passing of Richard Stowers Smith from Hunt, Texas on August 12, 2026. Richard served on HMI’s Board of Directors in the early 2000s and he and his wife, Josephine, were great supporters of HMI.
In 2026 HMI was asked to nominate Richard and Josephine’s Stowers Ranch for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Lone Star Stewardship Award. The Stowers Ranch won that award for the Edwards Plateau area for being one of the largest intact, permanently conserved private properties in the Texas Hill Country. Richard and Josephine place the ranch under a conservation easement with The Nature Conservancy in 2007.
The Stowers Ranch was founded by Richard’s maternal grandmother in 1904. Richard, who was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1934, would spend summers at the ranch. Richard went on to graduate from Yale University and spent most of his career in investment banking. Josephine and Richard married in 1962 and had over 64 years together. While they lived in New York City for awhile, Richard and Jospehine returned back to Texas, living in Houston where Richard continued with his finance career with Rotan Mosle and Allied Bank, and later co-founding Ventex Management.
Richard continued to think about steward Stowers Ranch and the wildlife on it through all these moves. It was through that passion for the land and animals that he learned about Holistic Management and worked to educate himself and his ranch manager so that they could improve the grassland management at Stowers Ranch. He was a visionary and shared his passion with others associated with the ranch so that everyone could work together to improve the resilience of the land. As HMI noted in our nomination letter for Richard and Stowers Ranch
“It is often difficult for a ranch team to come together a work in unison toward a shared vision, but it seems to me that the Smith family has done just that. I believe it is Richard’s vision and leadership that has helped move the actual investment in and implementation of these ideas forward. It is no easy task to continue working on stewardship goals when weather doesn’t always cooperate. Many years of drought can mean that the desired results are often delayed or inconsistent. Continuing to persevere in these kinds of challenging times is the mark of a true land steward.
“The exciting news is that kind of perseverance has indeed paid off. When one of HMI’s Certified Educators, Peggy Sechrist, was tasked with monitoring the Stowers Ranch as part of a “Soil for Health” Program for NCAT, she found that despite the challenging landscape that encompasses the Stowers Ranch, they demonstrated high marks in more covered soil, biodiversity of plant life, and higher successional plant species than many of the other ranches that were monitored as well. The ranch team consistently works to balance the need for plant recovery and working toward improving stock density along with their concerns for animal performance and productivity, as any ranch must do to be viable as a working ranch.”
Richard’s legacy lives on his family and on the ranch because of that work. HMI offers our condolences to the Smith family.
