From Anita

My father Bill Smart died at home, of cancer and old age, on December 5th. My father was a Leo who was loved by so many people that I’m overriding my usual reticence to share personal information in such a public forum.

Despite the pandemic, I was able to travel from Mexico to Florida, quarantined, tested negative, and spent five days with him at the end of his life.

The past two weeks since his death have been a rollercoaster of emotions and memories while sorting through his photos, memorabilia, files, and paperwork-- and dealing with all the other details.

My father grew up as an Indiana farm boy during the great depression. When his schoolteacher grandmother asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, he replied “Nothing pertaining to agriculture.” That was his story and he stuck to it. He often used the words ‘life’ and ‘career’ interchangeably, but no matter what you call it, he had ninety-four very interesting years.

His love of new places and people took him to every state in the US and to a couple of dozen countries. His talent for art, design, and publishing was expressed in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors. The spirit of adventure and cheerfully getting to know everyone who crossed his path stayed with him to the very end, and included the doctors and nurses during his increasingly frequent visits to the hospital during his final years.

He genuinely enjoyed every moment of every day more than anyone I’ve ever known. I'm grateful he had such a wonderful life, that we had such a great dad for such a long time, and I'm profoundly relieved that the many complications of the final moments of his life are over and that he's moved on to his next adventure.

His capacity for staying connected to everyone (and I mean everyone) meant a steadily growing annual Christmas card list. He insisted on writing personal notes to several hundred people every year, and his attention to detail inevitably won out over mere deadlines. He always said that as long as the cards were completed by Easter, he’d done his duty to stay in touch.

When he got cancer about twenty years ago, Silvia invited everyone on his mailing list to send him remembrances for his birthday. The response was overwhelming, especially since there were rumors that it might be his last birthday. Months later, while helping him meticulously alphabetize and archive the hundreds of responses, I understood that his capacity for loving so many people had been returned tenfold. The avalanche of love and prayers probably (literally) saved him from that first brush with death-by-cancer.

He collected photos and memorabilia the way he collected people. Almost every person he knew had a file in his massive filing cabinet jammed with photos, letters, printed emails, newspaper clippings, and all the paper paraphernalia that we tend to share with each other to illustrate our lives, and which usually get trashed soon after being shared. But for Bill Smart, every little bit of remembrance mattered. He kept everything, even his grade school report cards and every single diploma, recognition, certification, and award he ever received.

He was a second father to those whose fathers died young or were otherwise MIA. He was also the best buddy, favorite brother, adopted son, appreciated mentor, ardent supporter, and enthusiastic cheerleader to everyone he met.

His extraordinary loyalty was reflected in his decision to continue to be his wife’s primary caregiver, despite her steadily increasing memory loss; even during the final months, weeks, and days of his life. They were quite the pair, joking that he was her memory and she was his eyes.

Two weeks of sorting through photos and memorabilia have given me the opportunity to reflect on our father-daughter relationship. Whenever he was questioned about his daughter’s choice of running Natik (a lean development nonprofit) from my off-the-grid home in southern Mexico, he would laugh and say that I was conceived in missionary school, and the rest is history. He also liked to repeat what I told him whenever he’d try to cajole me into accepting a piece of fine artwork from his formidable collection: “If it doesn’t’ fit in my backpack, I don’t want it.” Not to mention I don’t have walls. Many of my choices were as enigmatic to him as his choices were to me. But we loved each other anyway.

His steadfast belief in my work carried through to the very end. The night before he died, he adamantly encouraged me to attend an event at Church by the Sea (where he was a member and Elder), which has supported my work in Mexico and Guatemala since 1999. Attending that event included interacting with many people, which meant I could not visit him the next day, the day he died. We both knew when we parted that it would probably be the last time we’d be together in this life. And we were both ok with it because we’d prayed, laughed, cried, sang, hugged, kissed, said what we had to say, and even took a couple of three-way selfies with Silvia. Plus, Silvia and Diane were with him, and he knew I was with them in spirit.

One of the traits I’ve recognized that I share with him is a capacity for sheer grit tenacity (that occasionally resembles obsession) that seems to be hardwired into our DNA. Another thread in our family’s nature-nurture tapestry is voracious curiosity and a conviction that love and creativity can solve just about anything that really matters. Those traits are (hopefully) balanced by the discipline of acceptance of those who aren’t like me, or are so much like me that they drive me crazy. I refer to it as a discipline because not slipping into judgment requires constant vigilance.

I figure if I can learn from (and make an effort to love) people who are different from me, then I am honoring my father’s conviction that love is significantly better than not-love.

I’ve always been fascinated by how faces change over a lifetime, and his propensity to document everything included having lots of portraits. The portrait video posted in the video section was a fun exercise that included photographing his photos, some gentle cropping, turning everything to sepia for visual continuity, and approximating a sequence of images to reflect his ninety-four years. I knew my father for sixty-two of his ninety-four years and watched many of those transformations occur during the course of my lifetime.

Thanks for being there. The outpouring of condolences, memories, well-wishes, and prayers have brought sweetness and sparkle to what has been a rough couple of weeks.

Love,
Anita