As a former U.S. Army Delta operator, he’s served his nation admirably around the globe and been highly decorated for his courage and tenacity. Much like the children of Sparta, Smith had an affinity for overcoming tough challenges at an early age. As a kid who preferred Field & Stream over Mad magazine and backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas over trading baseball cards, a young Jim Smith was far more interested in pushing his own limits than he was with the trivialities of teenage life. “Anything difficult, hard, and challenging — that’s what I wanted to do,” Jim says a few decades later in his stately Texas home.

This explains not only the core of the man himself, but also a few of his choices in interior décor. A variety of substantial hunting trophies adorn his home office, and adjacent to that room, the home’s calming hues of brown meet a framed picture of the snow-capped Matterhorn in the Pennine Alps. While the only Matterhorn most of us have conquered resides in the land of Disney, Jim has actually scaled the real mountain itself, along with Mont Blanc, The Eiger, and a handful of other substantial peaks. He’s also tackled the grueling Haute Route between France and Switzerland.