The Mysterious Death of Z. Smith Reynolds

There had been a party that night at Reynolda, just one of many during that summer 75 years ago.

It began with a barbecue supper, and servants carried the food through the woods to the guests on the patio of the Oriental boathouse.

The boathouse overlooked Lake Katharine, which was really more of a big pond created by damming Silas Creek. Once a year it was drained so that the staff could sweep out the bottom with brooms.

Voices echoed through the woods and across the water as the evening wore on.

By 11 o'clock, most of the guests had gone home. The servants went to bed. And the sounds of a soft summer night settled over Reynolda. A day of leisure gone. Another soon to begin.

In July 1932, this was the realm of Z. Smith Reynolds, the master of the estate.

His friends called him Smith, and he had grown up at Reynolda. He was the youngest son of R.J. Reynolds, who founded the tobacco company that put Winston-Salem on the map and earned more money than imaginable selling a pinch of tobacco wrapped in a tiny sheet of paper.

The estate was only a few miles from downtown, where workers toiled day and night to churn out Camel cigarettes by the billions, but it was a lifetime away from the grit and sweat of the Reynolds factories.

There was a Depression raging across the nation. But it stopped at the gates of Reynolda.

Reynolda is now the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, part of Wake Forest University. But back then it was just called Reynolda, and to drive past it today on Reynolda Road offers just a glimpse into the extraordinary lifestyle it nurtured.

It was more than a big house in the woods with a meadow in front. It was several hundred acres, modeled on an English country village with rolling greens, gardens and miles of meandering paths. Like Biltmore House, the imposing mansion on the outskirts of Asheville, Reynolda was both a symbol of unbridled wealth and a nearly self-sufficient community. In its heyday, Reynolda had its own power plant and dairy. It even had a post office.

R.J. Reynolds died in 1918, five years after his Camels took America by storm in one of the most successful product launches in the history of business. His wife, Katharine, died six years later, when Smith was 12.

Katharine Reynolds was the driving force behind Reynolda, and without her, the estate just about shut down. Smith's two older sisters, Nancy and Mary, were married, and he bounced around between several schools before following his older brother, Dick, to New York.

Then in June 1932, Smith Reynolds returned to Reynolda with his new bride, Libby Holman. He was a restless spirit and an accomplished aviator. Holman wasn't his first wife. Although only 20, Reynolds had already divorced and had a young daughter from that short-lived marriage.

Holman was six years his senior, a voluptuous songstress from New York by way of Cincinnati. Her breakthrough song was "Moanin' Low," which she sang in the bluesy manner of the Harlem singers she admired.

The newspapers had a phrase for the couple - "the Boy Millionaire and the Torch Singer."

For Reynolds, it was a return to the peaceful existence he had known in childhood. He was 6 when the family moved into Reynolda, and he loved playing hide-and-seek in the house's 64 rooms. A sensitive child, he had grown into a man whose daring exploits in the air contrasted with his quiet manner on the ground.

For Holman, Reynolda was an entry into a world of luxury and soft-footed servants. After her lean and hungry years on stage, she was reaping the rewards of her hard work.

With the young couple in residence, an invitation to a swimming, boating or cocktail party at Reynolda soon became the most coveted invitation in town. Prohibition was still in full swing, but that wasn't a problem for people with money or connections. And if the more genteel townsfolk had misgivings about letting their children get too caught up in the goings on at Reynolda, they only whispered their displeasures and went about their business.

The weekend of July 4, the couple planned a series of parties that would unite their still separate worlds.

Holman invited Walter Batchelor, her agent, and Blanche Yurka, an older actress and acting coach.

Reynolds invited his boyhood friend, Ab Walker, whom he had hired a few days before to be his assistant, and Raymond Kramer, a math tutor who was helping him prepare for the aeronautical program exam at New York University. Reynolds had recently bought night-flying equipment and he talked about trying it out at the city's Miller Airport in the next few days.

On July 6, Reynolds organized a 21st birthday party for C.G. Hill, an old friend, and invited several other longtime friends.

The partygoers dined. They drank. They explored the woods. By midnight, most of the guests had left.

Night came to Reynolda. The watchman began his rounds.

Walker would later say that he was closing up the house at about 1 a.m. He was downstairs in the reception room, when he heard a muffled gunshot from upstairs.

Holman shouted over the balcony on the second floor, "Smith shot himself."

Walker ran upstairs to the sleeping porch in the East Wing and found his friend slumped over the bed with a bullet wound in the side of his head.

He and Holman carried Reynolds down the stairs and Walker drove them all to Baptist Hospital, then just a few buildings on Hawthorne Road.

At 5:25 a.m., July 7, Reynolds was declared dead.

Almost immediately, the questions began. But there was one key question on everybody's lips - Why would a rich young man who had recently married the toast of Broadway kill himself?