After his war service (1942-1946), during which he landed on Omaha Beach, he returned to academic study. In 1948 he received his B.A. in English and music from the University of Northern Iowa and in 1949 his M.A. (in American Literature Since 1870) from Columbia University, where his advisor was Lionel Trilling.

Also in 1948 he hitchhiked from Iowa to Columbia University and during the very first week, met Fernando Rodolfo de Jesus Vargas Zamora, who would remain his companion until Vargas' death in 1989 from Kaposi's sarcoma.

Smith was a teacher for 37 years in a progressive school, Bentley in New York City from 1950 to 1954, and then at New Canaan High School in Connecticut from 1954 to 1986). He attended the Teachers College of Columbia University from 1961 to 1962. In his life outside work, he was book review editor of The Humanist (1953–1958) and for the Library Journal, where in the 1960s he reviewed Dick Gregory's Nigger.

He founded the "Hvmanist Book Clvb (XXVII Millport Ave., New Canaan, CT)", using the name "Lvcretivs" (1957-1962). To join, subscribers had to resign from at least one other book club. Although Saturday Review did a write-up about the club's use of parody, it genuinely supplied books for Eastern Oregon University, Harvard, and others.

With Fernando Vargas he founded in 1961 the Variety Recording Studio, which became a major independent company on 42nd Street just off Broadway, using the motto, "in the heart of showbiz."

The studio recorded clients, then supplied acetate 33, 45, or 78 rpm disks, LPs, cassettes, album jackets, mothers, stampers and cartridges. Their clients included Robert Alda, David Amram, Paul Anka, Jerry Bock, Irving Caesar, Sammy Cahn, Paddy Chayevsky, Chubby Checker, Bobby Darin, Bob Fosse, Earl Garner, Marvin Hamlisch, Hildegarde, Jay and the Americans, Thad Jones, Maurice Levine, Meadowlark Lemon, Barry Manilow, Mary Martin, Galt McDermott, Joseito Mateo, Ethel Merman, David Merrick, Arthur Miller, Mills Music, Liza Minnelli, Issachar and Taipora Miron, Odetta, Eddie Palmieri, Joseph Papp, Gilbert Price, Tito Puente, Doc Severinsen, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, Sun Ra and His Arkestra, Tiny Tim, Sarah Vaughan, Gwen Verdon, Eli Wallach, Harold Wheeler, Robert Whitehead, Stefan Wolpe, and others.

In 1996 at a humanist convention in Mexico he met Taslima Nasrin, recipient of the $100,000 UNESCO Singh Award and Amnesty France's 2005 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, of whom he became a friend, webmaster and editor.

His correspondence with E. E. Cummings, John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, Thomas Mann, Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, Albert Schweitzer, John Steinbeck, William Carlos Williams, and others is found in the Houghton Library at Harvard.

In 2005 he originated the Philosopedia website.