Anna Louise Smith, age 92, adored wife, mother, grandmother and friend, passed away peacefully on June 3, 2024, following complications from a serious fall. She was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Gerard A. Smith, best known as Gerry.
Louise is survived by her five children (Sharon/husband Tim Lecklider, Gerard Jr./wife Leslie Smith, Jennifer Smith, Lorraine Kinman/fiance Richard Rosenthal, and Janine Smith), seven grandchildren (Kathryn Lecklider/husband Nicholas, Lauren Lecklider/husband Nick, Sara Smith, Zachary Smith/wife Carrie, Brian Kinman, Daniel Kinman/wife Jenny, and Jason Kinman), and five great-grandchildren (Arlo Lyon, Lewis Lyon, Brooke Smith, Annabelle Smith, and Milo Denny). Louise was born on October 30, 1931 in Carlisle, Kentucky to John Franklin Brown and Nannie Lee Hall Brown.
She was the seventh of eight children and lived much of her childhood on farms, as her father was a sharecropper tobacco farmer of very modest means. When Louise was stung by a number of bees as a small child, she remembered being taken by her brother to the local doctor on the back of the family plow horse as they did not yet own a car. Just before her 90th birthday, Louise wrote an autobiography for her children and grandchildren in which she shared many detailed memories of her childhood and life on a farm.
Louise was a wonderful writer throughout her life, writing poems and tributes for her husband and children as well as being a consummate and dedicated letter writer a.
