Bob was my cousin, one of the fun ones. I knew his mother best, my beloved Aunt Trudy, and first became aware of this dashing and already fully adult cousin during visits to her dune-top home on Lake Michigan. It wasn't until I was 16 and visiting California with my mom that I started to pay attention. We visited Bob, Terry and young Kieron in house in Van Nuys, and what I remember of that visit was Terry introducing me to kiwis, which at that time were astonishing to a Michigan kid, and Bob introducing me to Bill Evans, which was like taking that kid to a wonderful new moon full of sophisticated, cigarette-smoking bohemians.

Twenty plus years later, I was back in California, trying to help my mother make a move to assisted living necessitated by the onset of Alzheimers. I had two small children and a job in Pennsylvania at the time, and the task was way over my head, but seemingly out of the blue (I think they were in the midst of one of their RV adventures), Bob and Terry arrived on the scene. Bob set up a card table in my mother's apartment and set about sorting through her paperwork -- financials, taxes, all the grownup business. He was exactly like an angel, and I do not know how I would have managed without him.

It was a delight to surprise Bob and Terry (that's a unit: Bob-and-Terry) in Reno for their 50th anniversary. I wanted to celebrate with them of course, but also to honor them for their unbounded kindness and generosity toward my family. The site was the Nevada Museum of Art, gloriously tricked out with the work of Dale Chihuly, and a perfect place to gather around this pair of art and adventure lovers. Like with Bill Evans' music, my introduction to Chihuly's art came through Bob.

Through the years, we followed Bob and Terry's adventures -- criss-crossing the country to visit friends, charging up the coast for the annual Shakespeare festival, swinging by jazz hot spots -- with the same sense of amazement I had on first encountering Bill Evans. What a life! My husband and I were among those they visited when they came all the way east, and it was like a magical caravan had come to town, full of tales (and photos) of adventure. Preoccupied with our jobs and kids, we were negligent in keeping in touch with extended family, but Bob and Terry's care in visiting us -- and calling on birthdays and always remembering our kids at Christmas with little treasures like beaded eggs -- made the difference. We still have the beaded eggs and now too the beautiful painting of a lobster, red brushwork on silk that once hung in their home, and I'm grateful for this reminder of their love and sense of delight. May Bob rest in just the right amount of peace.

Bob grew up mostly in Highland Park, Illinois. His parents were Mason and Gertrude C. Smith.
In the process of compiling this memorial, a great joy has been uncovering tidbits squirreled away in old photo albums and other boxes rarely, if ever, visited.  We found ourselves with many old boxes of family memorabilia after Bob became the family patriarch and, at 91, the oldest living male he had found on his family tree genealogy searches .
Obviously a precocious little guy, his mother, Trudy, had recorded several things for posterity.
At 2 Bob "learned nursery rhymes and tried to sing a nursery song with quite an idea of tune"
2 1/2  "learned to count to 20 and recognized 8 letters of the alphabet and asked for things in complete sentences with creative word pronunciation.  He could recite pages of stories from My Bookhouse.  When on a driving trip he sang songs lustily with his parents.......Mary Had a Little Lamb, Bye, Bye Bunting, Rock a Bye Baby and The sidewalks of New York."   Bob was reading at 4yrs & for the rest of his life always had a book nearby when there was free time.  
Bob always was the one person in any group that knew all the words to all the songs so was always welcome at singalongs which he loved.  His traditional jazz favorite was "Amazing Grace" and he also could sing all the verses,