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Celebrating the Life of Robert Smith ’42
Robert L. Smith ’42, Headmaster at Sidwell Friends School from 1965 to 1978 and author of A Quaker Book of Wisdom: Life Lessons in Simplicity, Service, and Common Sense (published in 1998), died on May 24 at his home in Bethesda, MD. The MFS Alumni Association honored him in 2012 with the Alice Stokes Paul Alumni Merit Award. Below is a passage shared with attendees at a memorial Meeting for Worship hosted by Sidwell Friends School on June 1.
Letting His Life Speak
Robert (Bob) Smith lived a remarkable life as a camper, athlete, soldier, relief worker, husband, father, dean, school head, trustee, author, and leader in secondary education.
Raised in Moorestown, NJ, both family and Quakerism were central to Bob’s life from the moment he was born. As a boy he enjoyed Sunday dinners and drives with his grandfather, and summers camping and canoeing at Flying Moose Lodge, ME.
After graduating from Moorestown Friends School, he attended Harvard for two years before serving in the Army for three years. From 1943 to 1946, he trained and fought across Europe and in the Battle of the Bulge - motivated to overpower the ‘ocean of darkness,’ as he later wrote in his book, A Quaker Book of Wisdom. After the war, Bob spent the next several years completing his undergraduate education and volunteering with the American Friends Service Committee in the U.S., France and Mexico.
It was while serving at a Quaker relief camp in rural Mexico that he met Eliza, who shared Bob’s passion for service and social justice. In 1948, they were married under a Giant Sequoia tree in the Muir Woods. They continued to study and serve together in the Bay Area before moving to New York City, where Bob received his Master’s in English Literature and later became Associate Professor and Dean at Columbia University.
He and Eliza raised their three children, Susan, Katie, and Geoff, in Manhattan, regularly bringing them to the University’s campus and to museums across the City. For his children and eight grandchildren, Bob personified principles of family, service, love, and justice - and made his passion for education visible to all through his work.
In 1965 the Smiths moved to Washington, where Bob became headmaster of Sidwell Friends School on the condition that the Board would agree to integrate the school. For 13 years, he learned the names of his 1,000 or so students and their parents, knew their family stories, and built traditions and programs that put the school’s values into action.
Bob was convinced that education was the path to peace, and he made it his life’s work.
Photo courtesy of Sidwell Friends School
One of the fruits of aging is the realization that our greatest possession is what we know about life. We can do no better than to pass along our most precious possessions to those most precious to us... Here are some of the life lessons that I wish someone had shared with me when I was growing up. 1. Seize the present. 2. Love yourself, whatever faults you have, and love the world, however bad it is. 3. Stop talking and listen to what you really know. 4. Play soccer! (Or whatever team sport you love). 5. Accept the fact that our lives are only partly in our own hands. 6. Believe in the perfectibility of yourself and society. 7. Make your love visible in the world through your work. 8. Seek justice in the world, but not in your own life. 9. Look for the light of God in every person. 10. Let your life speak.
