Longtime voice at area religious services
Despite living in Pittsburgh for the past 50-plus years, Mary Alice Smith was always a North Carolina girl at heart. She grew up going to the beach and she would sing “By the Beautiful Sea,” that old barbershop song, even through her final days at the Longwood retirement community in Oakmont.
“She was singing right up till the end,” said her daughter, Leslee Five land of Blue Hill, Maine. “Even when she couldn’t speak very clearly anymore, you could understand the songs.”
In the 1960s, Mrs. Smith was half of the singing Bel Canto Duo and the voice behind religious services all around Pittsburgh, performing everywhere from Temple Emanuel in the South Hills to Baldwin Community United Methodist Church to First Baptist Church in Oakland. Though she stopped singing professionally when her voice began to fade, turning instead to poetry and embroidery as her creative outlets, Mrs. Smith was active over the years at the Shadyside Choral Society and spent her long retirement organizing the music committee at Longwood.
Mrs. Smith, 91, died Sunday at Longwood from an infection.
Born Mary Alice Shackelford in Kinston, N.C., Mrs. Smith went to college in 1944 as a voice major at the Women’s College of North Carolina, which later became the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. After she graduated, she moved to New York City and began singing religious music as a soloist in churches, before the Women’s College asked her to return to teach, said her son Gregory Smith, a physician in Portland, Ore.
It was her singing, in fact, that first caught the ear of her soon-to-be husband, Norman Smith, a Marine Corps veteran fresh out of World War II. She was invited to sing at her friend’s wedding in December 1945, and Mr. Smith, an usher, heard her sing at the wedding rehearsal. He decided she was the woman he was going to marry — which he did, six months later.
For some time in New York, Mr. Smith attended Columbia University on the G.I. Bill while Mrs. Smith sang in churches. They moved to Pittsburgh when Mr. Smith got a job at Mellon Bank, where he worked from 1950 until his retirement in 1988. Sunday mornings would mean services at Baldwin Community Methodist Church or First Baptist Church, and Christmas Eve would be Handel’s “Messiah.”
“I remember for a long period of time, Friday nights would be my father and us kids entertaining ourselves while she was off singing at the synagogue,” Dr. Smith said.
Mrs. Smith, a Methodist and later a Presbyterian, always listened closely to the services at Temple Emanuel.
“For her, it was a job, but more than that, it was an opportunity to hear other views on life,” Dr. Smith said.
Another son, Christian Smith of Helena, Mont., said that participating in other cultures and traditions came naturally to her — a remnant of her gracious Southern upbringing — although he laughed when remembering the first time he heard her swear, after a car cut her off in traffic.
“I think she was as surprised as I was,” he said.
With her friend Carolyn Reyer, Mrs. Smith formed the Bel Canto Duo, which recorded and performed around Pittsburgh in the 1960s, but sometime in the ’70s, Dr. Smith said, she realized her voice was no longer strong enough for professional work. She began doing fiber arts and quilt work, becoming an active member of the Embroiderers’ Guild and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. She found a second voice writing poetry, publishing a book in the mid-’90s, and for years took part in a writing workshop at Carlow College (now Carlow University) called Madwomen in the Attic.
She and Mr. Smith moved to Longwood in 2003, and Mr. Smith died in 2013, months after their 67th anniversary. Though she always talked about and went back to North Carolina, Mrs. Smith was an active presence at Longwood, hosting dinner parties and bringing concerts to the community, according to her friend Jackie Powell.
“When people would come to stay with the Smiths, they became instant family,” Ms. Powell said.
In addition to her three children, Mrs. Smith is survived by two brothers, Robert Shackelford of Mount Olive, N.C., and Arthur Shackelford of Greensboro, N.C., six grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at Shadyside Presbyterian Church, 5121 Westminster Place, Pittsburgh.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggest donations to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Department of Music or the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.