Louise Smith

A service will be held July 28 in Arlington for Louise (Lou) Tibbetts Smith, 105, of Bethesda, MD, who died December 29, 2023. She had been a seasonal resident and visitor to West Arlington since 1942, when her parents, Mary and Norris Tibbetts, Sr., bought a property there. Lou was born in Boston on December 5, 1918 and first lived in Greenwich, NY, but moved to the Hyde Park area of Chicago with her family in 1923. She attended the “Lab School” of the University of Chicago through high school, then earned her undergraduate degree in English literature at Wellesley College and an M.A. in child development at the University of Chicago. Starting during summers at the beach on Lake Michigan in the 1930’s, her family developed a tradition of sing-alongs that continues through gatherings at the Arlington farmhouse today. Lou herself composed songs and lyrics; her “Ballad of a Bold, Bad Man” is in the Wellesley College Songbook and is also a favorite at Camp Pemigewassett, an all-boys camp in New Hampshire. Reflecting Lou’s sharp sense of humor, it tells the story of a Harvard man who disguised himself as a Wellesley senior woman to win the college hoop race but ended up tossed in the lake after he was unveiled. At her 80th college reunion in 2019, Lou, then 100, led the massed alumnae from later reunion years in a rousing rendition of her song. A co-founder of the Wellesley Literary Circle in the DC area, in 2017 Lou received the Jessie C. McDonald Award from the Washington Wellesley Club for being an inspiration to the Washington-area Wellesley community. Participating in three book clubs altogether, she joined two by Zoom from Vermont in her final month. During and after WW II Lou did relief work in Marseille, France, and at a refugee camp run by the American Friends Service Committee in the Apulia region of Italy. After the war she worked in daycare centers and preschools in New York City, Philadelphia, and Bethesda, returning to teach two-year-olds at a cooperative nursery school in her sixties. She is survived by her son Dan of Woods Hole, MA; her niece Cynthia Browning and her sister-in-law Karen Tibbetts, both of Arlington; her former sister-in-law Virginia Lightheart; and many other nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her husband Kenneth Smith; her sisters Eleanor Tibbetts Hanrahan of Arlington and Priscilla Tibbetts; and her brothers Joel Tibbetts of Arlington and Norris Tibbetts, Jr. A memorial service to celebrate Lou’s life will be held at 1 pm on July 28 at the Federated Church of East Arlington, 102 Ice Pond Rd. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Federated Church, the American Friends Service Committee, or the Martha Canfield Library of Arlington.