F

A celebration of life is planned on May 2 for Dr. Mabel Dunkirk Smith, a beloved teacher, musician and choir director in the community for nearly half a century, at the First Presbyterian Church in Morristown.

Smith died on November 21 in Bethesda, MD., where she had been living with her daughter and son-in-law since 2022. She was 98.

Smith inspired legions of music, musical theater and voice students as well as most people who met her, even for a short time. Her daughter, Katherine Newell Smith, said that whenever she introduced her mother to friends at gatherings, someone would invariably rush over to her and exclaim, “Your mother! OMG! Your mother is amazing!”

“Mabel was my first voice teacher and remained a loving, inspirational, ‘always there’ presence in my life,” said Karen Easton Hawthorne, a fellow voice teacher and professional singer who Smith taught in the 1960s. “Those who adored her found ‘force of nature’ to be a fitting description of her person, music-making and influence.”

Smith and her late husband S. David Smith modeled a strong and loving marriage for their children, Katherine, 73, and David, 75. They met at Westminster Choir College as students and members of the famed Westminster Choir in Princeton, NJ., married in 1950 and formed an enduring and complementary partnership of mutual respect and adoration. They taught and performed together throughout their 53-year marriage. S. David had a glorious bass-baritone voice and Smith was a thrilling dramatic soprano. They were brilliant choral directors as well, serving as Ministers of Music in various East Tennessee churches over the years.

And they were an adventurous pair.

Taking sabbaticals from their positions at Lincoln Memorial University, where Smith taught music and voice from 1970 to 1990 and directed student and community musicals, they returned to school at the University of Colorado in Boulder to get doctorates in their 50s.

Smith assured the skeptical registrar that she and her husband might be the first gray heads the school would see but that others would follow.

“We’re always the first,” she said.

Indeed. Elder study became popular soon thereafter.

Smith studied vocal pedagogy with UC’s music chair, Dr. Berton Coffin, who was researching the physics of the voice. Her goal was to learn how to sing so she would never lose her voice. In the process, she earned her doctorate and wrote the seminal thesis on belting, the Broadway sound. Her daughter told friends, Smith went out to Colorado singing “Un Bel Di” and came back singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.’’ Her dissertation was performing the role of Mamma Rose in Sondheim’s “Gypsy.”

When she returned home, Smith reprised the role in “Gypsy” with the Morristown Theater Guild and incorporated her new-found techniques with her students as well as in her own classical performances and leading roles in musicals. She relished playing the witch in “Into the Woods.” She once even commiserated about the witch’s prosthetic fingers with Bernadette Peters backstage after one of Peters’ Broadway “Gypsy” performances.

On another adventure, in 1989, she and S. David, then 62 and 68, respectively, set out on bicycles from their Boatman’s Mountain home to attend S. David’s 50th high school reunion in Chewelah, WA, more than 2,300 miles away. They averaged 80 miles a day, camped out along the way or stayed with friends and arrived two weeks early.

Smith continued bicycling into her late 80s, acquiring several cycles, including a fold-up variety that she had custom-built and could pack into a suitcase.

In 2007, Smith became a founding member of Encore Theatrical Company in Morristown, which taps the considerable local talent for its dramatic and musical productions and offers music theater education in public schools. Smith built and painted sets as well as performed regularly in Encore productions.

“Her extraordinary talents, onstage and behind the scenes, enriched countless audiences, fellow artists and students over many years,” said Micah-Shane Brewer, Encore’s founding artistic director. “From her exquisite voice and the memorable roles she brought to life to her distinctive flair for painting sets, Mabel brought an undeniable spark to everything she touched.”

One of Smith’s last musical theater roles, at age 89, was as Hattie in Encore production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” where she sang “Broadway Baby,” and brought down the house.

“I had never known a woman who had her strength, resilience, and ability to share the world around her with others,” said Carolynn Beier Bailey, director of music ministry at Lutheran Church of our Savior in Johnson City and a former student.

True to form, Smith attracted an entire “family” of fellow pilgrims from all over the world when she trekked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the 500-mile walk across Spain in 2019 at age 92.

She may be the oldest person to have completed the Camino largely solo.

Smith, of course, “adopted” her fellow walkers and many remained in touch.

Katherine recalled a conversation one afternoon during a regular video call check in as Smith had just arrived at an alberge (pilgrim hostel) during a rainstorm in Galicia.

“Mom, you look wet,” Katherine said to her mom who replied, “No, darling. I look drenched. And, here, meet your new brother, Tim, from Taiwan!”

Mabel D. Smith was born in Newark, NJ., on December 30, 1926, to Belle Arthur Lasker, a petit, Scottish beauty and Charles Lasker, an Italian American prize fighter and tool inventor.

Her parents divorced when Smith was young leaving her and her elder brother, Carl, in her mother’s and grandparents’ care in New York City.

Her mother died a few years later whereupon she and her brother were sent to a state children’s home on Governor’s Island in the East River. Her aunt and uncle, Mabel, a cook, and Adrian Dunkirk, a house painter, took the siblings home with them to New Jersey as soon as they could and later adopted Smith. “They rescued me and saved my life,” Smith said of her adoptive parents.

Smith did well in school and displayed considerable artistic and musical talents. Her church choir director in Passaic, NJ, encouraged her to pursue music and attend his alma mater, Westminster Choir College. But, finances were tight and Smith thought she would more likely attend secretarial school. Her parents had other ideas and were creative and resourceful in the process traits that Smith learned well). During the summer, they set up a tent on Atlantic City’s boardwalk with a family sleeping area in the back and a makeshift kitchen facing the public, separated by a muslin tarp. Her parents would get up early before work to stock the ice box with ice cream, make waffle batter and set up the waffle iron. Smith would spend the day making waffle ice cream sandwiches to sell to the beach crowds. They made enough money to pay Smith’s college tuition.

Westminster proved transformative for Smith.

The choir sang under the direction of Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski and other musical luminaries of the era with leading orchestras and in major concert halls. “We walked with giants,” Smith often said.

After their graduation and wedding, the Smiths moved to Buis Creek, NC, where S. David chaired the Campbell College music department, and both led church music ministries and started their family.

In 1955, they moved to Jefferson City, TN, and joined the faculty at Carson Newman College. There Smith mounted a production of “Brigadoon” in the school’s gym and first worked with members of Morristown’s Theater Guild to help her with choreography and lighting. She also assumed the Minister of Music position at the First Presbyterian Church and later at the First Congressional Church in Knoxville.

In 1964, another move brought the family to Morristown. Smith became the music teacher and choir director at Morristown High School, directed the annual Kiwanis Kapers musical revue and several Theater Guild productions as well as performing in numerous concerts over the years before being named professor of music at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, TN, in 1970. For 20 years, she taught music and voice, led the choir and produced an annual musical starring her students and members of the community.

“She was a mentor to me at LMU,” said Linda Smiddy, a former student, “and I was always amazed how she could teach you without you realizing you were being taught. I am a better person for knowing her.”

In 2006, the Dr. Mabel D. Smith Music Resource Center at LMU was dedicated with the support of a generous donation by Rod Keen, another former student.

“She had infectious energy and made you love singing and performing the way she did.,” he said. “She was the most influential voice teacher I ever had.”

One evening about a decade ago, a friend and physician who had treated Smith, was a dinner guest at Katherine’s home in Bethesda. He and Katherine were walking in the garden when he turned to her and said, “You know, your mother is the most spiritual person I’ve ever met,” Then he added, “And I’ve met the Dalai Lama.”

The celebration of Smith’s life on May 2 will be at 1 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. It will include a church service and reception followed by a program of music and memories, featuring Smith’s talented friends, at First Presbyterian Church, 600 W. Main St. in , Morristown. Colorful attire is requested.

In Smith’s honor, donations may be made to Encore Theatrical Company via Venmo @Encore-Theatrical-2006; Walters State Community College S. David and Mabel D. Smith Endowment for the Performing Arts and to the Lincoln Memorial Dr. Mabel D. Smith Endowed Music Scholarship.