Susan Smith
Susan Fay Smith proud mother, beloved physician, mentor, tae kwon do black belt and tai chi practitioner died peacefully of Alzheimer’s on January 4, with her devoted partner Glo at her side. She was 76 years old. Born in San Francisco to Charlot and Donald Smith, she grew up in upstate New York and Minnesota. As a teen and a young adult, she worked at Girl Scouts camps in the Northeast, and in 1961 she served as valedictorian of her graduating class in Clifton Springs, N.Y.
She was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. Then, ever adventurous and political, she moved to Sweden in 1965 with $100 in her pocket, to avoid paying taxes to fund the Vietnam War. After three years as a lab tech in a Stockholm hospital, she returned to the U.S. to complete her undergraduate degree and attend medical school at the University of Michigan. She arrived in Burlington as an ob-gyn resident in 1976, where she would remain to r