In Memoriam: Tom Smith | Department of Chemistry

October 5, 2012

Walter Smith, Jr., known as "Tom," was born in 1922 in Havana, IL, where he enjoyed fishing and boating on the Illinois River. He attended the University of Illinois and received a Ph.D. in chemistry from Indiana University in 1945. In that year he married the love of his life, Miriam "Micki" Nethery Smith.

After teaching at the University of Iowa, he escaped the bitter Iowa winters by moving to the University of Kentucky, where he taught organic chemistry for nearly four decades. An avid reader in childhood, he longed to travel the world, preferably by sea, and did so with the loving companionship of Micki, another world-class traveler. A brief visit to Tangier, Morocco stimulated Tom's interest in the exotic Middle East, and he later taught at universities in Tripoli, Libya and Beirut, Lebanon, bravely accompanied by his soulmate Micki. The two travelers celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 2005 with a cruise to the Hawaiian Islands, sailing out of San Francisco's Golden Gate with toasts of champagne. Tom had an instinct for the good life. He especially enjoyed poetry, often reciting stanzas by heart, and was fond of claiming that he knew more about poetry than any poet knew about chemistry.