‘Wow! Thanks, mister!’

Come Fourth of July and New Year’s, the skies over Alaska will be missing some of their usual flair.

For years, Griz Smith shared his love of pyrotechnics with Alaskans of all ages through his business “Fire Art by Griz.”

Griz loved to make people happy. He loved to spread joy as his handcrafted explosions of light and sound painted momentary scenes on the canvas of the night sky.

We remember talking to Griz shortly before New Year’s Eve 2000. He had contracts for fireworks worth more than $1 million scheduled to fire that night.

But that wasn’t the story he really wanted to tell us.

Griz made commercial-grade fireworks, not the stuff sold along the Parks Highway in Houston. He made the big commercial ordnance that clapped like thunder and lit the sky for miles.

What Griz really wanted to talk about that day more than a dozen years ago was a couple of kids who’d come to visit their grandmother around the lake from him. The kids knew him enough to know about his playful side. So he said when they heard him making noise in his yard, the brother and sister called to him.

“Hey mister, we’re shooting off some bottle rockets. Can you come play?”

Griz was busy that day — he had tens of thousands of dollars worth of fireworks to make for shows around the country — and he told the kids he couldn’t play then, but maybe later.

Griz said he worked fast — and faster still — after he heard the kids and their grandmother load into the car to run an errand that afternoon.

As soon as their car was gone, Griz said he put his work aside and set his plan in motion. At spots all around the lake he set up fireworks and wired them to a control panel on his deck.

When the kids returned a few hours later he was ready.

“Hey, mister,” their voices sang across the water.

That was Griz’s cue.

He flipped the switches and punched the buttons on his control board that set off a private fireworks show around the lake that lasted for several minutes.

When the show was over and the evening was still again, he heard their awed voices drift across the lake again.

“Wow! Thanks mister!”

Griz Smith, 69, died suddenly May 20 at the Willow Town Site Foodmart. A clerk reported he’d collapsed inside the store. Alaska State Troopers and an air-ambulance responded, but he was already gone.

Thanks, Griz, for the fireworks and the memories.