The sky fell on him, and he got up -- RIP Otis Smith

In a job like mine you meet people during the worst moments of their lives. A few of them, like Otis and Lory Smith, somehow transform their unspeakable tragedy -- in this case the senseless loss of their daughter -- into an enduring benefit for others.

Otis passed away Wednesday. Lory died in 2008.

What follows is a column I wrote about Otis last May:

FROM THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC

They gathered at a church hall in Phoenix last week to honor Otis Smith, who transformed an unbearable loss into a gift. For us.

I met him in January of 2000, about six months after the death of his 14-year-old daughter, Shannon.

Otis and his wife, Lory, invited me to their house so that I could see for myself the spot where their precious girl had been killed.

It happened in the back yard of the family's a red brick home in central Phoenix on June 14, 1999. Shannon was speaking with a friend on a portable telephone. She walked out the door of the family room and into the backyard. It was a little after 10 p.m. Otis was watching the TV news. Lory was in bed.

At the same time, somewhere in town, a gun was fired into the night sky. The bullet went up and up and up. And then down, striking Shannon in the head.

''This is where I found her,'' Otis told me, pointing to a spot in the grass.

Nearby, Lory added, ''No one knew she was shot until they did the X-ray at the hospital."

In the months that followed, even as they dealt with their grief, Lory and Otis lobbied to increase the legal penalties for randomly firing a weapon. The result was "Shannon's Law," which makes the act a felony.

All those years ago Otis told me, ''We're not out to create some kind of legacy for our daughter. That kind of thinking only denigrates her memory. We only want a law that might keep what happened to our child from happening to someone else's.''

And it has.

And so last week the non-profit organization Arizonans for Gun Safety, which for years has worked on ways to reduce gun deaths and injuries, presented Otis with its first Smith Family Torchbearer Award for his ongoing efforts to curb gun violence.

Lory passed away in 2008.

In accepting the award Otis spoke of his wife's "compassionate veneer but steely resolve."

He added, "It was hard to tell her no."

After Shannon's death the couple adopted twin boys.

They also became board members of Arizonans for Gun safety, developing friendships with founder Hildy Saizow and others who were victims of gun violence.

I've met a number of the group's members over the years. Many have suffered horrible losses. A spouse. A sibling. A child. None expected to become involved in the rough and tumble arena of politics and firearms, but each does so to honor those who were lost or who may be lost in the future.

One of the group's board members is Jennifer Longdon, who was paralyzed from the waist down by a bullet in 2004.

She and her then fiancée was pulling into a drive-through restaurant when someone in another vehicle fired five shot into their truck. Longdon's boyfriend was blinded. The shooter was never caught.

Longdon is a gun owner and a big believer in gun rights. But also a proponent of common sense.

She traveled to the National Rifle Association convention last week to advocate for reforms like universal background checks.

"When more and more gun owners raise their voices and say I believe it's OK to have background checks, or it's OK to limit magazine capacity, we'll be in a better place," she told me. "We can't let extremists dominate the conversation. We can't let money dominate the conversation. Or politics."

It's not easy to publicly oppose the gun lobby, however.

Longdon has had death threats. She's been accosted. Activists like her are derided, sometimes described as a cackling flock of "Chicken Littles."

"But when I look around at the people I work with, at people like Otis Smith, I realize that's the side I want to be one," Longdon said.

I can see why.

Back in 2000, after speaking with Otis and Lory Smith, I wrote that they were not crusaders. That they had no hidden agenda. That they weren't zealots or pawns or political operatives. As I've said before, and will say again, gun safety advocates like the Smiths, like Longdon, like Saizow and others in their organization are not wild-eyed Chicken Littles telling us that the sky is falling.

They're the people it fell on.