On the Georgia Tech campus Dr. Bill Smythe was known for almost 40 years as a rigorous yet popular professor of mathematics.
He developed an early interest in linear programming, a math technique employed by industrial decision-makers for the more efficient use of natural resources, and even co-authored a textbook on the subject. Throughout most of his career, he concentrated on training Tech students as engineers, sharpening their skills in calculus and differential equations.
At about the same time, in churches and auditoriums around Atlanta, he developed an even wider reputation as a master of an instrument that usually carries the melodies of medieval music – the recorder.
William Rodger Smythe Jr. of Norcross, 84, died Tuesday at Hospice Atlanta of complications of pancreatic cancer. His memorial service is at 3 p.m. today at H.M. Patterson & Son Oglethorpe Hill chapel.
“In his prime, Bill Smythe was the best recorder player in Atlanta,” said Kevin Culver, founder of the Atlanta Singers and choir master at the Cathedral of Christ the King.
Fifty years ago, early music was rarely heard in Atlanta, he said, and instrumentalists who played it well were rarer. He called Dr. Smythe one of the pioneers who brought centuries-old music to the point where it is performed locally with regularity and at a high level.
Dr. Smythe frequently played in ensembles that accompanied Atlanta Singers concerts and performances of “The Play of Herod,” a 12th Century music drama that has been staged in numerous Atlanta churches for decades.
“Bill played all varieties of the recorder – soprano, alto, tenor and bass – and did it superbly,” said Adele McKee, former choir director at Trinity Presbyterian Church. “The Baroque and Renaissance music that he and others played added such color to our annual Christmas concerts.”
Dr. Smythe even built a harpsichord from a kit around 1970, and he often brought it to the Trinity Church for others to play during services there. “He was such a giving person, and personally he was a delight,” said Mrs. McKee.
Dr. Smythe’s skill with the recorder was completely self-taught.
A close friend of 60-plus years, Bill Dunn of Jacksonville, Fla., began playing a recorder in the mid-1940s when his apartment building neighbors complained about his practicing with a trombone for his Orlando high school band. When his classmate at the time, Billy Smythe, showed an interest in the recorder, Bill Dunn said he let Billy play a spare.
“Billy got to be a lot better on the recorder than I ever was,” Mr. Dunn said, “and after he settled in Atlanta he found other early-music players living nearby through a network of musicians complied by the American Recorder Society, and soon he was playing with an ensemble at Emory University.”
Dr. Smythe never took lessons, Mr. Dunn said, relying instead on an instruction manual published by the famed Von Trapp family and other pertinent written material he found.
Dr. Smythe also liked to devise complex word puzzles, 384 of which have been published over the last 10 years at www.doublecrostic.com. Sue Gleason of Montclair, N.J., who operates the website, said his puzzles were challenging without being esoteric.
Visitors to her site were delighted with his puzzles, she said, complimenting his work as “a feast of language” and “an eminently literate form of entertainment.”
Survivors include his wife of 60 years, Jacqueline (Jackie) Biggerstaff Smythe; two daughters, Brenda Torri of Flowery Branch and Nancy Thompson of Roswell; two sons, Bryan Smythe of Norcross and Rodger Smythe of Louisville, Ky., and nine grandchildren.
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