Donald E. Smith

Defense Department engineer worked in the field of rockets and missiles

Donald E. Smith, a retired U.S. Defense Department engineer who worked in the field of rockets and missiles and was also a rose fancier, died May 16 from prostate cancer at the Fairhaven Retirement Community in Sykesville. He was 99. The son of Earl Smith, a canning company executive, and Naomi Smith, a homemaker, Donald Earl Smith was born in Baltimore and raised in Highlandtown.

He was a 1937 graduate of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he enlisted in the Navy and served stateside, maintaining radar and sonar equipment.

After being discharged at the war’s end, Mr. Smith entered the Johns Hopkins University on the G.I. Bill and received a bachelor’s degree in engineering. He also received a professional engineer license.

Mr. Smith worked in research and development for the U.S. Department of Defense in the field of rockets and missiles.

His work connected him with NASA, and he became associated with astronauts and with Wernher von Braun, the former German aerospace engineer who became a leading figure in the development of rockets and America’s space program.

“He was at Cape Canaveral for two moon firings and later became closely acquainted with astronaut Mike Collins, who encircled the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, fellow astronauts. He was close friends with Mike Collins,” said the Rev. David S. Schafer, Mr. Smith’s personal representative and pastor of St. Benjamin’s Lutheran Church in Westminster. He retired in the early 1980s. “He kept his engineering license current into the 1990s and, after leaving the Defense Department, did some consulting work,” Mr. Schafer said. In 1984, he married Marie Dippel. “They had been a couple early on during their high school days and kept their friendship and relationship going, but did not marry until they were relatively old,” Mr. Schafer said.

The former Hamilton residents moved to Westminster in 1988 and became involved in education. The Smiths helped form the Carroll Community College Endowment Fund in 1990. At the college’s first graduation in 1994, they received a medal of support for higher education, recognizing their support of not only Carroll Community College, but others throughout the state of Maryland.

Mr. Smith established and endowed a scholarship at Carroll Community College for computer science and engineering students, while his wife established and endowed a scholarship in teaching. In 1998, the college honored the couple by naming the main road into campus Don & Marie Smith Drive.

The couple also enjoyed traveling and took a six-month trip around the world. Mrs. Smith died in 2002. Mr. Smith remained an avid gardener and was especially fond of tending his rose garden. When he relocated from Westminster to the retirement community in Sykesville, “he transferred all off his roses to Fairhaven,” Mr. Schafer said.

“Don was incredible, and had a way with people. You don’t often think that a person with a scientific mind could be so outgoing, but he was,” Mr. Schafer said.

“He could talk with anyone and endeared himself to people. If you ever met Don, he was unforgettable,” he said. “He was short and slight, but had a personality that was huge. People counted themselves lucky that they had gotten to know him and were glad they did.”

Mr. Smith was a member of the Sykesville American Legion Post 223, the Elks, Moose and the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association. He was also a Mason and a member of its Freedom Lodge. He had recently been honored by the Grand Chapter of Maryland for 70 years of Masonic service.

He was a member of St. Benjamin’s Lutheran Church and Springfield Presbyterian Church in Sykesville.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Fairhaven, 7200 Third Ave., Sykesville.

Mr. Smith is survived by a nephew and two nieces. Donald Smith and his wife were benefactors of Carroll Community College. photographer,” Mr. Duncan told the New York Times in 2003. “I just felt maybe the guys out there deserved being photographed just the way they are, whether they are running scared, or showing courage, or diving into a hole, or talking and laughing.”

His one rule, he said, was to never photograph the faces of the dead, out of respect for their families at home.

Mr. Duncan largely allowed his photographs of the Korean War to speak for themselves, refraining from commentary on the events they depicted. His outlook changed in Vietnam, when he photographed the 1968 defense of Khe Sanh, a Marine outpost that was pummeled for 77 days by North Vietnamese rockets and mortars.

“We seem determined to impose our will and way of life upon most of the rest of the world, whether or not they want it, appreciate it or ask for it,” he wrote in “I Protest!,” a 1968 book that collected some of his Khe Sanh images.

Published by the New American Library for $1, the paperback volume sold about 250,000 copies and placed Mr. Duncan at the fore of photojournalism, alongside Associated Press photographers Eddie Adams and Nick Ut, whose respective photographs of a Viet Cong prisoner’s execution and a naked girl running from a napalm bombing helped turn public opinion against the war.

Mr. Duncan said he took a more artistic approach to some of his Vietnam images — one photo of a wounded Marine illuminated by candles and a lantern recalled the work of Rembrandt — after developing a friendship with Pablo Picasso.

From 1956 until the artist’s death in 1973, Mr. Duncan took an estimated 50,000 photographs of Mr. Picasso and his work, beginning with an image of Mr. Picasso in his bathtub, smiling and scrubbing behind his ear.

David Douglas Duncan was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Jan. 23, 1916. His father opened one of the region’s first movie theaters. He acquired his first camera at 18 — a 39-cent gift from his sister.

He attended the University of Arizona in Tucson and later transferred to the University of Miami, graduating in 1938 with a degree in Spanish and zoology. He contributed to National Geographic before joining the Marines in 1943.

While stationed in the Solomon Islands, he met a young Navy lieutenant, Richard M. Nixon. The two reconnected in 1968 when Mr. Duncan photographed Mr. Nixon — alone, before a pile of legal pads — crafting his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination.

His military decorations included the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart.

A marriage to Leila Hanki ended in divorce. He married Sheila Macauley in 1962.