Smith, Ph.D., Martha K.

Martha K. Smith (born Martha Kight, 1940) grew up as the daughter of Lucian Kight and Fay Kryder in Ross Township, PA, alongside her older sisters Mary K. Redfield and Lucretia K. Shulman. She took lessons in piano and voice while attending West View High School, and matriculated at the University of Chicago, where she earned her undergraduate degree (1961), met her first husband Peter W. Hanen, and wrote a doctorate in Music History (1973).

While raising three children, Martha taught music history and theory for twelve years in teaching positions at the Hartt School of Music, Trinity College, and Yale University. With the assistance of an NEH grant, she traveled to the Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial to analyze a 15th Century Renaissance manuscript of European musical compositions in the library of King Philip II, and the Institute for Medieval Music subsequently published her book "Channsonier El Escorial" in 1983.

For over forty years, Martha performed music across Connecticut, singing with the American Music Theater Group and Concora, and as a chorus member for the Connecticut Opera Company, as well as the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford and the First Church in Middletown.

Throughout her life, Martha K. Smith was known and loved for her compassion, charity, sincerity, lack of pretense, dry wit, and an abiding desire to help those around her realize their ambitions. She was preceded in death by her second husband Norris Parker Smith (1929-2014), and is survived by her son David R. Hanen of Chicago, IL, her son Jonathan M. Hanen, Ph.D. and his life partner Sarah S. Pleznac, and her daughter Laura A. Hanen along with her husband Paul T. Gay and grandson Landen T. Gay, all of Washington, DC. A memorial service for Martha K. Smith will be held on Friday, May 19th, at 10:00am at the First Congregational Church, 23 South Main St., Wallingford, CT.

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