From Plant Press, Vol. 15, No. 2 from April 2012.
Editor’s note: Steve Smith died on February 8, 2012. The remarks by Carol, Steve’s widow, are abridged from what she said at a Memorial Service held for Steve at Tikvat Israel Congregation, Rockville, Maryland on February 19, 2012.
The basic facts of Steve’s life are simple and uncomplicated. He was born in Bethesda, Maryland on March 11, 1948 to Ruth (née Gates) and Lyman Smith. Lyman was a plant taxonomist who had grown up in Winchester, Massachusetts, received his degrees from Harvard University, and worked at the Gray Herbarium until 1947 when he moved his family to Washington, D.C., to begin work at the Smithsonian Institution. Ruth graduated from Radcliffe College and married Lyman, a young man who lived in the neighborhood and with whom she had commuted to college. She was a homemaker and volunteer extraordinaire who raised four children and a foster daughter while also finding time to enjoy her passions for reading and for music.
Steve grew up in Kensington, Maryland. His siblings were older than he by 18, 16, and 10 years respectively. He lived in a neighborhood full of families and playmates, ready to get together for pick-up games of football and basketball, as well as playing and roughhousing at each other’s homes. He loved basketball and played it all his life. He spent many hours during his youth and adult life just going to a playground or a gym to practice shooting, as well as joining informal pickup games. It was also during Steve’s childhood that he began to collect stamps and to go bird watching. Steve’s summers, until adolescence, were spent at a family home in Rockport, Massachusetts, where he swam in the cold waters of the Atlantic, got to know his aunts and uncles, spent time with his cousins, and visited his grandparents.
Steve graduated from high school in 1966. It was in high school that we met and began dating in the spring of our senior year. Looking back I think we fell in love that summer of 1966, spending as much time together as we could. In the fall, however, we went off to our respective colleges, me to Douglass College in New Jersey and Steve to the University of Michigan where he majored in zoology. We saw each other over vacations and wrote each other constantly. In addition, Steve called me on the dorm phone once per week (that was an extravagance but his parents provided him with a generous allowance). But the letters and calls and vacation time were not enough and in 1969 I transferred to Ann Arbor and we were soon married.
As an undergraduate Steve worked at the university herbarium, mounting plant specimens and doing some plant identification. He enjoyed that work very much and had good talks with his father about Michigan’s collection. As our college years came to a close, I helped Steve with his applications for graduate school. He also applied to medical schools because he had received a draft lottery number that virtually guaranteed him a spot in the US Army and service in Vietnam (and med school students would have an exemption). When he went to one interview Steve was asked how long he had wanted to become a doctor. He answered that he really had not aspired to a medical career; needless to say that answer did not impress his interviewer. But he did want to pursue graduate studies in ecology and he was very pleased that the University of California at Berkeley was willing to take him. In April 1970 we graduated. In June our daughter Becky was born and in August we moved back to Kensington where Becky and I would live with my parents while Steve completed six months’ active duty as a reservist in the US Marine Corps.
Military obligation met, Steve began his doctoral program in the spring of 1971 and he really enjoyed graduate school. He held the typical grad student jobs—teaching assistant in a variety of zoology courses, as well as research assistant in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and in UC’s herbarium. On several occasions Becky and I accompanied him on trips to explore possible field study sites and determine which animal would be worthy of a dissertation. I am not a camper, but Steve actually got me to agree to camp out on one trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Unfortunately, we heard on the car radio that an axe murderer was on the loose somewhere in the vicinity and had killed some campers in their tents. I was all for turning around, but Steve would not hear of it. So we found a nice spot, ate our dinner cooked on the Coleman stove, and prepared to go to sleep. I relieved Steve of his keys, and Becky and I spent the night locked in our car. That was the last time I have ever gone camping.
Steve ultimately did his research on the ecology of chipmunks near Ukiah, California. He spent three years collecting data, watching every move that critters on his study plot made, and shooting other chipmunks outside the study plot to examine their teeth, take various measurements, find out what they were eating, and, for females, find out about their reproductive history. He had the quaint habit of putting chipmunk carcasses in our apartment freezer, thereby frightening neighbors and friends.
The early 1970s was the peak time of women’s consciousness raising. Women were determined to “have it all.” I was taking courses at Cal State University at Hayward, as well as tending to the house and raising Becky. In 1973 I embarked on a program toward a teaching credential, finishing my student teaching and receiving my credential about three months before our older son Jordan’s birth. My intention was to become a teacher. Steve was always very supportive of whatever I wanted to do. In late 1975 I decided to take the examination to qualify for Federal employment. Steve was planning to finish his degree in 1976 and there appeared to be a glut of ecologists in the pipeline for academic positions.
One spring morning in 1976 I received a long-distance call from the Office of Education in Washington, D.C., and was asked, almost apologetically, whether I might consider accepting a program specialist position. The only condition was that I had to begin working before the end of the Federal fiscal year on June 30. Without even thinking very hard, I accepted. Steve did not hear this news until that evening, and it did not faze him a bit. Since he had planned to spend the summer in California to finish writing and to fulfill his final two weeks of active Marine duty, he would drive us cross-country in June, fly back to California, finish out the summer, pack up the apartment, and drive back to Maryland in the fall. And so he did.
Steve was working in the US National Herbarium by 1978, thanks to the help of his father and Eddie Ayensu, Botany Chairman. Steve worked under a USDA contract for the first few years until he received a regular Smithsonian appointment in 1980. Although it may seem odd that a zoologist could be hired to work in a herbarium, Steve had studied a lot of botany and had relevant work experience. He loved the herbarium and may have known more about its collections than anyone else. Making a determination of a specimen was important to him and his innate love of puzzles made these challenges highly entertaining. In addition to the work itself, Steve spoke affectionately of many colleagues with whom he worked. He also became known to many in the museum as “that guy who rummages around trash bins for stamps” as Steve returned to his stamp collections. So we spent our careers working downtown not too far from each other.
Steve connected with our local community through basketball and birding. He played at the local recreation center and always updated me on emails indicating how many players would be available for a game (probably the only email he ever cared about receiving or sending) and only missed if we were going out of town or he was undergoing treatment. Steve was happy to go birding on his own but he participated in annual Christmas bird counts every year.
I can sum up our life over these past 30 years as terrific. We raised three beautiful, loving, talented, accomplished children, whom we love very much, and of whom we are so proud, and because of whom we consider ourselves to be so fortunate. And then there was the travel to visit family and friends, as well as to see far-off places, and the quiet times together. So you see that Steve lived a pretty conventional and simple life. A life filled with happy times, love, adventure, and laughter.
Here is what really counted for Steve: his family, his work, and his pastimes. He put a lot of effort and time into each and derived great pleasure from all. He was a shy guy who would not want to interfere with whatever you might be doing. However, if you wanted to learn what he knew and what he loved, he was a very attentive teacher. I think his children, his grandchildren, and others knew that this was the secret to getting close to him.
Sometimes I catch myself not believing that Steve is actually gone. He was first diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in 2007 and he fought that cancer with all his strength and determination and we were able to have and enjoy another four years. When Steve was first diagnosed I asked him to promise me that he would seek out and try any treatment that held promise for curing the cancer and extending his life. And he agreed and over the next four years that is exactly what he did. Recently Steve asked me to promise him that when he was gone I would continue to live life as fully as possible. So, although my heart is broken, I will keep that promise. – Carol Chelemer.
Addendum: Those of us who attended Steve’s memorial were touched to learn things about him that he was too self-effacing or shy to share with coworkers. We appreciate the very important role he played in the functioning of the US National Herbarium; regularly checking published revisions and monographs to annotate or update the names on our specimens, identifying unnamed collections especially those from southern Brazil and begonias, and distributing or filing the many mounted specimens that are constantly being added to the herbarium. Steve’s ability to recognize many plant families was a critical component of his job. Those of us who worked with Steve and the collections will think about him often as we recognize his ubiquitous handwriting on covers and specimens throughout the herbarium.
Steve also participated in several Smithsonian expeditions to collect plants in tropical countries, most notably trips to Peru and Gabon. He published at least one paper on the ecology of chipmunks and co-authored several contributions to plant taxonomy, including the USDA’s National List of Scientific Plant Names (1982), novelties or combinations in Begonia (Begoniaceae), Croton (Euphorbiaceae), and Tapeinostemon (Gentianaceae), and most recently a checklist of grasses for the Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies (2012). – L.J. Dorr.
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