Mignon C. Smith was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up in a small town near Birmingham.  Her father, J. Craig Smith, was head of Avondale Mills, a large textile company manufacturing mostly denim cloth and cotton yarn. She attended public school in Sylacauga through the ninth grade and then graduated from the Madeira School in Virginia near Washington, DC, and later, Briarcliff Junior College at Briarcliff Manor, New York with an AA. She transferred to the University of Alabama as a junior to major in political science and journalism.  In 1954 Mignon became the youngest Joint Master of Fox Hounds in the United States.  After she was bestowed this honor, she ordered her new riding jacket, selecting a pink collar instead of the traditional black worn by the English lady hunt masters.  She was chided for this bold diversion from the normal attire.  She admits this was an unusual move in a pre-women's lib era, but she responded that she wanted to "brighten up the Alabama hunt scene."

After college, she started a riding school and small stud farm south of Birmingham. When her farm lease ran out she moved to Washington, DC with a nucleus of her TB breeding stock where she became a radio news reporter for Alabama stations. She is now retired from radio reporting and is fulltime in the thoroughbred breeding, racing, and sport business.  She has some 60 head of homebreds in three states, all boarded out.

Mignon was a member of the Congressional Radio/TV Galleries, National Press Club and SPJ. She was a White House correspondent and was in the White House Press Room the night President Nixon resigned. Mignon retired as Washington correspondent for the Alabama Radio Network after reporting news with and about Alabamians for some thirty years.

Mignon has recently endowed a foundation in her father and mother’s name, the J. Craig and Page T. Smith Scholarship Foundation to provide full tuition for Alabama high school seniors to attend the Alabama college of their choice. A minimum C plus grade average and civic involvement and/or special family responsibility is required. A minimum grade of C+ is necessary to continue the four year scholarship.

At the University of Alabama Mignon has also endowed the J. Craig Smith Chair for Integrity in Business and funds programs in the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility. She is concerned about the loss of integrity in the current generation of business and hopes the programs at the University of Alabama will become a catalyst to teach the ethics that her father ascribed to in business to our future leaders.