Raymond has lost one of its finest citizens

By Lethbridge Herald on August 30, 2024.

LEAVE IT TO BEEBER
Al Beeber

When Norma Smith was invited to join the Raymond High School class of 1977 at our 40th anniversary back in 2017, none of us knew if she would accept.

Sure her daughter Barbara was one of the graduates but did Mrs. Smith really want to look at those faces again who once sat at desks in her classrooms? Did fellow teacher Kaye Anderson?

Well, apparently so because to the absolute delight of the gathering, they both joined our merry and greying crew as we shared memories and laughs.

I was first in Mrs. Smith’s classroom in Grade 5 – I think – when she substituted occasionally for homeroom teacher Mr. Hall.

Over the years, she graced many classrooms right through Grade 12 when she would handle Mel Spackman’s English teaching duties on occasion.

She was always a person who students respected, not because she ruled with an iron fist or a quick slam of a pointer against a blackboard but because she was kind. Firm in a quiet kind of way and always helpful and approachable to her pupils.

She was the type of teacher who students wanted to see at the front of a classroom. So when she and Mr. Anderson – who was a high school favourite himself – showed up for the reunion, we were all thrilled.

While life had taken us all on different paths since we graduated on Friday the 13th – seriously, Friday the 13th – those who made it back for that reunion shared a lot of commonalities and one was the respect we had for the teachers who helped us leave RHS with diplomas in hand.

I’ve kept in touch with Barbara, now Dalene, fairly closely since the reunion, meeting with her and husband Jack along with a couple of others from the class of RHS for lunch and chatting by text. 

That reunion brought several of us, who weren’t close in school, together and created bonds that will hopefully last a long time.

Barb’s kept me in the loop about her mom as she was moved from the family home into the Good Samaritans Prairie Ridge retirement facility where she spent her final days on this earth which ended last week at the age of 97, just weeks before her 98th birthday.

Mrs. Smith’s obituary was shared with me by fellow grad Darell Pack and it shed light onto what was a long and creative life, one which I’m sure few of us knew much about.

Born in Cardston in 1926 to Carlyle and Fanny Woolley, she was raised in Raymond and after attending normal school in Calgary to become a teacher taught for a year in Beazer before she married John Smith in 1946.

Barb used to joke that she wished she’d spent more time with my crew growing up but her dad didn’t want her hanging out with some of her classmates and I can’t blame him. Not that anybody would do anything to raise his ire.

What I learned from Mrs. Smith’s obituary was not only did she teach, she was a poet and had a love for Shakespeare. Her obituary says she and John would take their grandchildren – they had 31 from their five kids as well as 120 great grandchildren – to Shakespeare festivals in summers, which surely imparted that love for the Bard’s words in other generations.

A historian, she wrote or co-wrote more than a dozen books on Raymond’s history, as well. And she was a devoted member of her church, teaching in the LDS seminary program and in church classes well into her 90s.

Along with her late colleagues Mr. Spackman and Mrs. Meeks, Mrs. Smith honed my interest in English and sparked my own appreciation and respect for the language in which I write.

Norma Smith is one of the big reasons I’m in this business and speaking to you. And when she’s laid to rest Saturday morning in the Raymond Stake Centre I’ll be with her in spirit because I’m indebted to her in a very real sense for this career.

Rest in peace, Mrs. Smith. You’ll never be forgotten.

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