KINGFIELD -- Elizabeth S. Smith died Wednesday, Aug.
16, 2006, at Edgewood Manor in Farmington.
Born Elizabeth Cooper Saunders in Creston, Mont., May
22, 1912, Elizabeth was the fourth and last child of Arthur and Sarah Hix
Saunders.
Her father and engineering partner Walter Cooper had
begun homesteading in Creston in 1911, clearing a stump ranch on Echo Lake.
Elizabeth rode her horse to school while growing up there. The family boarded
horses for summer people on Echo Lake, including the Buds of the famous Bud
Liner railroad car.
Elizabeth's father moved the family to Kalispell so
that Elizabeth could attend Flathead County High School. Leaving his oldest son
Harry to work the farm, Arthur returned to his engineering, working on county
and city road building. He was later hired by the Department of the Interior to
help build a road in Glacier National Park. That road came to be known as the
Going to the Sun Highway, the first mountain road to be designed by a landscape
architect rather than an engineer, setting a new standard for road building in
national parks. As he did his entire life, Elizabeth's father kept a daily
journal of the road construction, the only record of the construction of that
famous road. The family eventually gave the journal to the Montana Historical
Society.
In 1929, Elizabeth's father was hired by Standard Oil
of California to frepresent its cold asphalt product, bitumuls, in the East. The
family moved back to Arthur's home state of New Hampshire and settled in Durham
where Elizabeth and her older sister Louise attended the University of New
Hampshire. By that time, her other brother, Bill Saunders, had gone off to
Annapolis, followed by a prestigious career in the Navy. After Elizabeth's
first two years at UNH, her father moved the family to Lewiston, more centrally
located to his territory, where Elizabeth enrolled in Bates College, from which
she graduated in 1934.
At Bates, Elizabeth met fellow classmate Abbott P.
Smith of New Bedford, Mass. They married on Dec. 7, 1934, in Cambridge while
Abbott was studying business at Harvard. They returned to Maine, where Abbott
developed several businesses in the Portland area, from his real estate
company, Maine Lakes and Coast Realty, to owning WMTW radio station and selling
life insurance.
Abbott developed the life insurance market among
farmers, loggers and fishermen, a market that had been overlooked by insurance
companies serving the larger business community. Their five children were born
while living in New Gloucester, Yarmouth and Freeport. Their last Maine home in
Freeport was a 160-acre farm on Casco Bay, currently the sales office for
Wolfe's Neck Farm organic beef and the location of the popular Recompense Shore
Campsites. At the recommendation of Abbott's doctor, the family moved in 1952
to Colorado, where Abbott worked for the Silas Dean Co., selling sales training
programs.
Elizabeth began her first work off the farm and out of
the house at that time. Using her talent for writing honed as an English major
at college, she began her career as a secretary.
In 1956, the family moved back East where Abbott worked for International Harvester in Boston and Elizabeth worked for nearby Polaroid. In 1959, they moved to New York City, where Abbott eventually started his own executive search company, Abbott Smith Associates. Elizabeth continued her career as secretary at Bobbs Merrill Publishing, then Young & Rubicam Advertising.
In 1962, Elizabeth and Abbott bought a 90-acre farm
upstate in Millbrook, N.Y., from which they commuted to NYC for several years
until settling in Millbrook full time in 1972. Abbott continued his executive search
business in Millbrook until selling to his employees in 1985. Elizabeth was a
longtime member of the Millbrook Garden Club for which she wrote their
newsletter for many years. She also wrote a column, My Side of the Street, for
the Millbrook Round Table for 12 years. In 1996, the family moved Abbott,
overtaken by Parkinson's and related medical conditions, to Farmington to
reside at Edgewood Manor until his death in 1998. After selling their Millbrook
home, Elizabeth moved to Kingfield in 1996 to live with her daughter Susan. In
addition to a short stint writing a column for the local paper, The Irregular,
Elizabeth enjoyed reading, writing her monthly family newsletter of nearly 50
years, rocking on the porch overlooking the Carrabassett River as it cascaded
over the dam in front of the house, and keeping track of the traffic and
neighbors.
Elizabeth, also known as Betty, is survived by her
five children, Carol Ann Robinson of Grand Junction, Colo., Abbott P. Smith,III, DVM, of Athens, Ohio, Susan S. Davis of Kingfield and Portland, Janet S.
Riben of Stockholm, Sweden, and James Arthur Smith of Golden, Colo.; eight
grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and two great-great grandsons.
Graveside memorial services will be held on Sunday,
Sept. 10, at 11 a.m. at the Readfield Center Cemetery in Readfield, followed by
a gathering at her nephew's Joseph Saunders' home nearby. In lieu of flowers,
memorial donations may be made to the World Wildlife Fund, 1250 Twenty-Fourth
Street, NW, PO Box 97180, Washington, D.C. or to Bates College, 2 Andrews Road,
Lewiston, ME 04240-6028 or to a charity of one's choice.
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