Ralph Tyler Smith was born in Granite City

Granite City, Illinois

Granite City is a city in Madison County, Illinois, United States, part of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. At the 2010 census, the population was 29,849, making it the third largest city in the Metro-East and Southern Illinois, behind Alton and Belleville...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. Smith was a Republican

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 politician from Illinois and served in the Illinois state house

Illinois House of Representatives

The Illinois House of Representatives is the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Illinois. The body was created by the first Illinois Constitution adopted in 1818. The state House of Representatives is made of 118 representatives elected from...

 from 1955 through 1969, including two years as the Speaker of the House from 1967 to 1969. Upon the death of Everett Dirksen

Everett Dirksen

Everett McKinley Dirksen was an American politician of the Republican Party. He represented Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate...

, Governor

Governor

A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...

 Richard B. Ogilvie

Richard B. Ogilvie

Richard Buell Ogilvie was the 35th Governor of Illinois from 1969 to 1973. A wounded combat veteran of World War II, he achieved fame as the mafia-fighting Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois in the 1960s....

 appointed Smith to fill his vacancy in the United States Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

. He served from September 17, 1969 to November 3, 1970. He ran for retention in the 1970 special election, but was defeated by Adlai E. Stevenson III.

Smith attended Illinois College

Illinois College

Illinois College is a private, liberal arts college, affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church , and located in Jacksonville, Illinois. It was the second college founded in Illinois, but the first to grant a degree . It was founded in 1829 by the Illinois Band,...

 and graduated in 1937. While at Illinois college he was a member of the Phi Alpha Literary Society

Phi Alpha Literary Society

Phi Alpha is a men's Literary Society founded in 1845 at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois. It conducts Business Meetings, Literary Productions, and other activities in Beecher Hall, the oldest college building in the state of Illinois....

. He attended law school at Washington University in St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

, Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

, and was admitted to the bar in 1940. Following the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese attack on Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...

, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve

United States Navy Reserve

The United States Navy Reserve, until 2005 known as the United States Naval Reserve, is the Reserve Component of the United States Navy...

 and was called to active duty in July 1942. Smith was commissioned as an ensign in October of that year and served until January 1946. He returned to Alton

Alton, Illinois

Alton is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 27,865 at the 2010 census. It is a part of the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area in Southern Illinois...

, Illinois and resumed his fledgling law practice. In 1954, he was elected to the Illinois General Assembly.

When Smith ran against Stevenson, the Utah College Republicans sent a then unknown nineteen-year old student, Karl Rove

Karl Rove

Karl Christian Rove was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush until Rove's resignation on August 31, 2007. He has headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives...

, to work on Smith's campaign.

Smith died in Alton and is buried at Sunset Hill Cemetery.

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