The following article is an edited version of a column written by Jennie Jones Giles in the Hendersonville Times-News in 2008.

Two days before the armistice was signed that ended World War I, Henderson County resident Hubert M. Smith was killed in action at Haumont, France.
At the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month ( Nov. 11, 1918) bells rang throughout the county announcing the end of the war.
Smith was the son of William Alexander Smith and Anna Hazeltine Jordan Smith. His father was a lawyer, one of the first realtors in Hendersonville, began the development of Laurel Park, and built the street car line to Laurel Park.
In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, Hubert M. Smith was a law student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. A letter home explains his reasons for leaving college to join the Army.
“I believe we are in the right,” he wrote. “I believe we are fighting for a great principle. I believe further, it is better to die with honor than to live without it.”
Smith, along with many residents from Western North Carolina and East Tennessee, served with Co. K, 324th Infantry, 81st Division in France.
When word was received that fighting would cease at 11 a.m. Nov. 11, 1918, whistles sounded at textile mills, bells rang at the Hendersonville Fire Department, and the bell at the Historic Courthouse began ringing. Church bells in Hendersonville spread the news. As people close to town heard the sound, bells began pealing in churches throughout the county.
From all outlying communities, residents converged on the town of Hendersonville.
“The celebration was wild and hilarious and exciting,” Frank L. FitzSimons writes in his book, “From the Banks of the Oklawaha.” “The news that the war would end at 11 o’clock that November morning was received here at 5 a.m. It was a chilly dawn and pitch-black dark, but shrill whistles crashed through the early morning darkness, followed by the softer tones of the church bells throughout the town and county to herald the glad tidings…”
An impromptu parade was held.
“When the parade ended, the crowd gathered at the bandstand near the City Hall … Mayor C.E. Brooks opened the ceremonies with a prayer,” FitzSimons wrote. “W.A. Smith and E.W. Ewbank each spoke briefly.”
At the time William Alexander Smith spoke, he had not received the news that his son had died two days earlier.
After Smith’s death, Army 1st Lt. Marshall F. Spears wrote the family.
“He was buried on the 11th in a small French village and his grave duly marked X,” Spears wrote. “It seems hard that he should be taken from us just as peace is dawning on the world.”
As World War I veterans returned home from Europe, they formed an American Legion Post and named the post after Hubert M. Smith.