Phoebe M. Smith

Phoebe M. Smith, 97, of Bainbridge Island, died July 10 at her home.

She was born July 12, 1908, in Seattle to Edith Emiily Spafford Cook and Charles Cook.

She taught in Winlock, Wash., as a young woman, and at View Ridge Elementary in Seattle for more than 20 years, beginning in 1953. She set up the religious education department for University Unitarian Church in the 1940s and was its first director.

She helped organize the Senior Center on Bainbridge Island, and was very active there for many years. Her piano was her solace and her constant companion. She accompanied choirs wherever she went, organized choral groups, wrote operettas and directed their performances on Bainbridge, including “Calamity at Four Corners.”

She also wrote poetry, journals and articles, and in her later years was a contributing columnist for the Senior Center paper, the Bugle.

She wrote two books, “Eighty Candles” and “Glimpses of Bainbridge,” and started an exercise class for nonagenarians.

She loved the sea, having sailed the Pampero up the Inside Passage and down to Mexico with her husband, Chesley.

They lived at the Queen City Yacht Club for a number of years aboard the “Phoebe M,” a powerboat that had her piano on it.

She was preceded in death by her husband of 53 years, Chesley A. Smith; her two sisters, Dorothy Jeanne Cook and Carla Iman; and a grandson, Brett Newell.

She is survived by Sylvia Chesley Smith, Susan Newell and Jennifer Ditmars; five grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; and five great-great-grandchildren.

Services will be at 1 p.m. July 29 at the Bainbridge Island Senior Center.