Lucy Smith loved to laugh, teach and inspire.”She was a remarkable woman,” said her friend Elizabeth Kiker.
“She was everybody’s best friend,” added her son Doug Smith.
Smith attended Atlanta Girls High School, where she received a scholarship to Wesleyan College. She married George William Smith, Jr. and they remained married for 67 years, until his death in 2009. During WWII, she attended the U.S. Army Medical Technician School and served as a medical lab technician at Fort McPherson.
After the birth of her two children, she returned to the classroom and attended Oglethorpe University where she graduated in 1959 with a bachelor’s degree in science.
“Education was so important to her,” said her friend Barbara Henry at Oglethorpe. “She embodies our motto of lifelong learning, she continued to learn throughout her life.”
Smith would go on to become the first woman to teach seventh- and ninth-grade science on television, in 1962, her son said. People would always recognize her from the five years she spent teaching on the WETV Atlanta Public School station. “She would run into people and they would say, ‘you’re Lucy Smith’,” said her son. “To me she was just my mom.”
Lucy Lindsey Smith, of Dunwoody died Dec. 29 of a lengthy illness. She was 91. A funeral service will be held 2 p.m. Saturday at Roswell Presbyterian Church, 755 Mimosa Boulevard, Roswell.
“She was my sister, my friend and my mentor,” said Kiker. “The good, the bad and the ugly, she was always there for me.”
Kiker remembers volunteering with Smith during the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, when they signed up to be security. As the duo drove downtown to start their shift, a police officer drove beside them and said out of his window, “The city of Atlanta will be safe tonight,” Kiker said. “He saw our shirts said security; we just laughed the whole way downtown.”
Devoted to a lifetime of education and service to others, Smith became a founding member of the Assistance League of Atlanta in 1982. She worked with Georgia Tech Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering. She was the only woman on the Georgia Science and Technology Commission for Gov. Lester Maddox and later the Science Advisory Council for Gov. Jimmy Carter.
As a result of her work, she was invited on a U.S. Air Force Stratotanker refueling mission. She also entered the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD complex, went down in a nuclear submarine and sat with astronauts for the launch of the first NASA space shuttle.
“What a role model for women,” said Henry. “She never slowed down; she never stopped.”
In addition to her son, Smith is survived by daughter Lindsey Smith Gardner, a sister Louise Lindsey Bruce, brother Jarrot Arren Lindsey, Jr., six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
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