TORRINGTON – At her request no services will be held for Edith (Edie) L. Smith, 86, who died October 30, 2019, at Goshen Healthcare Community. Cremation has taken place. Memorials gifts may be given to the Eastern Wyoming College Foundation. The Colyer Funeral Home assisted the family with the cremation arrangements.
Edie was born May 3, 1933, in Osborne, Kansas, the last of four children born to Jesse Earl Vague (a lifelong Kansas public school administrator) and Ethel Rae Shepherd Vague (who made motherhood a classic art). Edie attended Kansas public schools in Osborne, Hays, Norton and Leoti. Higher education was pursued at Fort Hays State University in applied vocal music. She received a B.S. Degree in Education (Cum Laude) majoring in English at the University of Wyoming, and also received post baccalaureate credit hours from UW. Edie served for several years as secretary to the Dean of the Graduate School of Fort Hays State University and for several more years as secretary to the Director of the Torrington Office of the Wyoming Employment Service. She then taught English and coached plays and musicals in the Torrington Junior High School and the Torrington High School until her retirement from teaching in 1984.
Edie and Guido (Guy) E. Smith were married in 1952 in Leoti, Kansas. They moved to Torrington in 1956 when Guy accepted the assignment of establishing a biology department at Goshen County Community College. Their two children were born and grew up in Torrington and graduated from the University of Wyoming before accepting positions and moving to the east coast.
Edie died, holding fast to a belief that world peace is attainable only if we can remove the lines that divide us into confrontational groups – economic, religious, ethnic, cultural, national, generational – that equate “being different” with “being wrong.” She firmly believed that, throughout one’s life, it is incumbent upon every individual to reexamine his values in light of both established knowledge and newly discovered truths, adjusting, when necessary, his personal value system in order that it reflect the latest body of knowledge about ways to build peaceful coexistence among men.
Edie is survived by her husband, Guy; a daughter and son-in-law, Linda and Craig Stark of Monrovia, Md.; a son and daughter-in-law, Timothy (Tim) J. and Lee Smith and two granddaughters, Jaclyn and Jamie Smith all of Raleigh, N.C.
