Too often when we write about our peers and industry leaders we see them only in their professional roles, and we tend to forget they have personal lives, families and interests outside of their professions. In this issue of RV News we've looked at Elden Smith's role as a hard driving business executive leading the industry's most successful RV company; we've looked at his role as one of the driving forces behind many of the industry association's most important decisions. With the commitment that he's made to the industry and Fleetwood, it might be hard to imagine that Elden has time for a personal life, but he does.

Elden and his wife, Barbara, have two children, Jill and David, and live in Riverside, CA. He is an avid golfer and collector. His collecting interests include hunting decoys, carousel animals, weather vanes, toy trains and safe banks among other things. And whether it is golf, flying or collecting, Elden seems to go at it with the same intensity that he does business. According to David Humphreys, who we interviewed for background on Smith, Elden becomes an expert on the subject of his interests.

Smith said, "I do tend to get maybe overly interested in things, I don't know what it is. But I have a lot of interests and it's one of the nice things about traveling. On weekends when I'm traveling , anyplace I go I can find something interesting to do, whether it be going to a museum or an art gallery.

"In addition to hunting decoys, I've collected sporting art, posters, calendars, carousel animals, weather vanes and a whole variety of things. I enjoy the history of all of those things too, not just the item itself. In terms of weather vanes, for example, I get into the different factories where they come from and their history.

"But I guess it's just my way to kind of get away from it all. It's like playing golf. You can get your head into something and be in a whole different world in a short period of time. It's pretty relaxing, very challenging and very interesting. I don't like to think of it as an obsession, but I've been told by some people, my family primarily, that may be what it is.

Speaking of golf, Elden has a trophy that many amateur golfers would covet. And that trophy may exemplify not only his passion for the game, but his commitment to any undertaking. That trophy represents his team's first place finish in the Bob Hope Desert Classic in the ProAm.

"It was like winning the lottery," Elden said. "It was the first year that I had attempted to get into the tournament and had to go on a waiting a list. I got a call the Friday before the tournament started and they said, 'Mr. Smith, if you'll bring your check down here we can get you in; we've had somebody drop out.' So I drove down, took my check in and met my partners for the first time on the first tee. "We just had incredible luck. When we needed to do something, one of us came through. And there were times when all three of us were in the woods and the Pro would come through.

"We had four different Pro's. We played with Payne Stewart on the last day and he had nine birdies, and we went 18 under that day. Actually, we ended up in a tie for first place. The tie was carded off on the first hole of the host course which was Indian Wells and our A-Flighter had birdied that for a net eagle which gave us the win over the other team.

"It was a thrill to have a chance to meet Bob Hope. But I've played in enough golf tournaments to know that it's luck. I mean you have really got to have everything go well. We didn't play over our handicap to a significant degree, but like I said, when we needed somebody to be in the hole somebody would come through.

"I didn't start playing until about 10 years ago, after the kids grew up and were headed off in other directions. Barbara and I woke up one morning and said, 'Well what are we going to do today?' Believe it or not, we didn't have anything to do. So we started thinking we've got to find something to do so we decided to take up golf. As much as we can we play together.

When it comes to collecting, its for relaxation and the way it stimulates his mind rather than collecting for investment purposes.

He said, "Early on in getting interested in collecting things and watching the way a lot of other people collected, Barbara and I decided that we were not going to get to the point to where we put things in closets and in the basement. We were only going to buy things that we had a place for and were interested in. So if we can't display it, then we don't buy it."

That makes sense for hunting decoys and safe banks, but how about carousel animals. "We have five," Elden said. "One is in what we call the sun room, one is in the living room, one is up on the landing upstairs. And we have a place at the desert where we have another one.

"They were all made from the middle 1800's up to the 1920's. They make nice decorator items, so we live with them as well as enjoy collecting them."

"I learned early on that I had better buy things that I enjoy living with. While I've made some very good investments, I've bought some things that will never be worth what I paid for them, so I'm going to have to live with them for a long time.

A large part of the Smiths' interest in collecting is a particular item's history. Elden cites toys as an example. He said, "I've gotten into toys. I found some cast iron trains one weekend at a flea market. I brought them home and they all had different engine numbers. Six months later I found a locomotive picture puzzle that happened to have the same locomotive number on it as one of these cast iron trains that I had - the number was 999. I thought, that's interesting -- there must be more to this. When I first saw that number on the little cast iron toy, I thought it was just a number that somebody picked out of the air. I went down to the library one night and went through all the old train history that I could find. Finally, I found it. The 999 was a train that ran in the late 1880's between New York and Chicago and set a land speed record of around 118 miles per hour."

One of Elden's collections give him a new talent - a safe cracker.

"When I get into things I'm never sure where it might lead -- little safe banks, for instance. Safe banks are little penny banks shaped like safes. I was wandering through a show and saw three or four of them at one time and found out that there were several hundred made. They were very popular in Victorian times. This was kind of fun because each of them has a little combination on it and they don't always work when you get them. So as I would sit on airplanes coming home from trips or sit in front of the TV at night, I would get one of these little safes and would just try combination numbers until one finally worked. After awhile I got to a point where I knew what the mechanism was like and within a matter of five or ten minutes, I could open almost any one of them."

Certainly, Elden Smith's industry involvement makes his schedule hectic, and it involves quite a bit of travel. He saved his airline boarding passes in 1994 and at the end of the year he had 107. So his interests outside of his professional obligations offers him an opportunity to relax both at home and on the road -- and it often allows him to make new friends in the process.

"All of this certainly occupies my time," he said. "As I travel, going through all of our plants and meeting different people, it's amazing how many things you have in common with different people in different places. I'm always meeting new people and it seems we always have things in common that we can talk about."