To the Editor:

''Tobacco Town Changing Image as Reports on Smoking Darken'' (news article, April 26) reminded me of how dominant and well regarded the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was decades ago in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Near the end of World War II, at the age of 14, I went by train from New York to a boarding school in Winston-Salem. The first outing of the school year was a trip to the R. J. Reynolds cigarette factory. During the tour we each gleefully received a pack of cigarettes. Since the field trip was school-sponsored, we reasoned that it would be O.K. to smoke them.

However, smoking was forbidden, and each girl had to surrender her unopened pack to one of the escorting teachers before entering the bus back to school. In April a brilliant graduating senior was expelled for breaking the rule.

I never did figure out why, with the antismoking rule strictly enforced, the school persisted in taking students to tour the Reynolds factory -- unless it was to garner free cigarettes for the faculty lounge.