Larkin I. Smith

Taylor would succeed Smith in a special election held some two months after the crash. Taylor was reelected every two years until 2010, when he was defeated by Republican State Representative Steven Palazzo. Smith's widow, Sheila Smith, ran unsuccessfully against Taylor in 1990 for the seat.

He defeated Democratic State Senator Gene Taylor and took office on January 3, 1989. However, Smith died on the night of August 13 in a plane crash in rural Perry County near Gulfport after returning from opening the Little League baseball "Dixie Youth World Series" in Hattiesburg. The bodies of Smith and pilot Chuck Vierling were not recovered until the next morning after a search in which rescuers had to bulldoze their way through the forest. Smith's death came only six days after fellow Representative Mickey Leland of Texas died in a plane crash in Ethiopia on August 7, 1989.

In 1988, Smith ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from Mississippi's 5th congressional district in the southern portion of the state after eight-term incumbent Trent Lott gave up the seat to make a successful run for the Senate.

Larkin Irvin Smith (June 26, 1944 – August 13, 1989) was an American Congressman from Mississippi serving for seven months until he was killed in a plane crash in Perry County, Mississippi in 1989.