Susan W. Smith
Former Ruxton resident and volunteer shared her grace and spirituality after moving to her Maine home, Sunshine
Susan W. Smith, who worked in admissions at Goucher College and was an active volunteer, died Nov. 25 of complications from Lyme disease at her home in Sunshine, Maine. The former Ruxton resident was 78.
“Her home in Maine was called Sunshine, and I felt that very much described Susan,” said Sally F. Carpenter of Barrington, R.I., who formerly lived in Ruxton. “She had a very sunny personality.
“She was a very good and close friend whom I first got to know 57 years ago when she and her husband started dating and when I started dating my future husband,” Mrs. Carpenter said. “She was a very optimistic person who was very good at getting people together.”
Sally Elizabeth Whiteford was born in Baltimore and raised in Ruxton. She was the daughter of Col. Roger Streett Whiteford II, who had commanded the “Dandy 5th” Regiment of the Maryland National Guard, and Edith Burnside Whiteford, former director of education at the Maryland Academy of Sciences.
Mrs. Smith attended the old Lida Lee Tall School and Towson Middle School, and graduated in 1955 from Towson High. She studied for two years at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Va., then earned a bachelor’s degree in 1959 from Goucher College.
In 1958, she married Dr. Gardener Watkins Smith, a surgeon. They spent the1960s in Charlottesville, Va., before returning to Ruxton in 1970 when her husband rejoined the Johns Hopkins medical community as an academic surgeon.
Mrs. Smith had worked at Black & Decker Corp. and, during the 1980s, worked in admissions at Goucher College.
Active in the community, Mrs. Smith had served on the search committee for a headmistress at Bryn Mawr School and volunteered with the Johns Hopkins Carry-On Shop.
Mrs. Smith spent summers beginning in her childhood on Deer Isle, Maine, as had her husband. In 1998, after her husband retired, they moved permanently to the community of Sunshine, which is on the island and overlooks Penobscot Bay.
“She was one of the most magnetic individuals I’ve ever known. She had a profound grace. Everything about her was that way. She always dressed in a beautiful way that was profoundly Susan,” said Judith Jerome, who retired last year as artistic director of the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle, where Mrs. Smith had been a financial supporter and volunteer.
“Susan completely understood what we were trying to do and embed in the community,” said Ms. Jerome. “At the opera house, she did everything from cleaning out the refrigerator to working in the garden. She’d wear a gaucho hat and something flowing and would be up to her knees in the mud, digging out weeds.”
Ms. Jerome said after a new production debuted at the opera house, she would go home and find a thoughtful note that Mrs. Smith had left about the show.
She said that after her friend moved permanently to Deer Isle, she eschewed the boards and other volunteerism that had framed her life in Baltimore.
“Her goal was to have a different life, and she wanted to enjoy solitude and grow the spiritual side of her life,” Ms. Jerome said. “She did not want to lead organizations, but she was certainly capable of doing so.”
Ms. Jerome recalled carefully planned tea parties at Mrs. Smith’s home with fine tea cups and linen tablecloths.
“People would come to her to resolve problems, and being in her presence was so welcoming. Her tea parties had an ... elegance to them because she paid attention to detail and she had a real appreciation for things,” Ms. Jerome said.
“If someone was on the outside of a group, Susan would bring them in without being obvious,” Mrs. Carpenter said.
“Starting in the 1980s, her spirituality blossomed into a life-changing resource for many people, whether longtime friends or new acquaintances, who sought and received her good counsel,” said her son, former City Paper reporter George Van Siclen Smith II of Baltimore.
“People reimagined themselves at her home and garden, which she’d turned into a space where her strength and beauty were shared bounteously,” her son said. “She was an ardent champion of others in need of encouragement and guidance, including while volunteering for good causes over the years, and on a personal level gave gifts of helpful, healthful ideas that have been deeply valued by a large community that grew around her for years, near and far.”
Mrs. Smith, an avid gardener, had been a member of the Maryland Garden Club. Her husband died in 2007. Plans for a memorial service to be held at Sunshine in 2016 are incomplete.
In addition to her son, she is survived by two daughters, Rebecca Tremain Smith of Philadelphia and Elizabeth Whiteford Whitehead of Boerne, Texas; a brother, Roger Streett Whiteford III of Riderwood: and eight grandchildren.