Will Smith's father, Willard Carroll Smith, dies

Will Smith's father, Willard Carroll Smith, has passed away. The younger Smith's ex-wife, Sheree Fletcher, confirmed Mr. Smith's death via Instagram. Mr. Smith raised his family in Wynnefield and owned a refrigeration firm.

Fletcher, whom Will Smith was married to from 1992 to 1995, is the mother of Smith's first child, Willard Smith III, who goes by Trey.

While Will Smith has yet to publicly comment, he has consistently talked about the positive influence his father had on his life and parenting skills. According to a 1996 interview with Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey, Mr. Smith bought his son his first turntables and amps. After Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff's second album, He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper, hit big, the rapper squandered his new millions.

Rickey wrote:

So Mr. Big Stuff found himself at the age of 19 with a big house in Merion and three fancy cars in the driveway that he couldn't afford to fill with gas. But he had a quick learning curve.

"What my father made clear to me early on was, 'Focus. Just do one thing well,' " Smith says. He continued his partnership with "Jazzy Jeff'' Townes, and they recorded the Grammy-winning "Summertime,'' a dreamy love letter to their hometown, on the album Home-base.

In the same interview, Smith said that he paid tribute to his father by naming his first child after him. Willard Smith, along with Smith's mother Caroline, taught him how to be a parent.

"There are three things you have to give children: love, discipline, knowledge,'' Smith says. "You make sure they have someone who would die for them. You make sure that they respect everything and everyone around them. And you teach them everything you know."

Similarly, in an interview with Charlie Rose, Smith recalled how his father instilled a great work ethic in his son. Smith recalled how one year, his father decided he wanted a new wall on his shop. "My brother and I had to dig a six foot hole for the foundation. We were mixing the concrete by hand. We were building this wall for a year and a half. Every day. Every day after school were coming back, mixing concrete, just me and my brother," Smith told Rose.

"I remember standing back and looking at that wall saying, 'There's going to be a hole here, forever. There will never be anything but hole here.' And a year and a half later, we laid the final brick. And my father stood back with my brother and I, and I know he planned this, he says he didn't but I know he had been planning this for the past two years, but we stood back, we looked at the wall, he looked at me and my brother and said, 'Don't y'all never tell me you can't do something.' "