Robert W. Smuts

Smuts, Robert W. Mr. Smuts died of pneumonia on November 17, two weeks before his 83rd birthday, at Glacier Hills Retirement Community. Bob grew up in Queens, N.Y. While in high school he won three-in-a-row city-wide writing contests spon sored by the Herald Tribune. He attended Queens College and was its first Summa Cum Laude graduate. He went to Harvard Business School on a scholarship. Too thin to be accepted into Officer's Training School, he joined the army as an infantry man and studied Chinese in the army A.S.T.P. program, but was sent to the European theater where he served in Patton's 3rd army and acted as a German interpreter for his company. His war letters will be in the archives of the Bentley Library. After the war he spent 8 years as an historian at Columbia University and had published several books, including Women and Work in America and European Impressions of the American Worker. He left Columbia to edit a current affairs magazine and then worked for 18 years in public affairs at Ford Motor Company as chief writer for Henry Ford II and selected senior executives. Bob left Ford at age 57 to pursue studies in evolutionary biology at Univer sity of Michigan, an interest stimulated by his daughter, Barbara, with whom he co- authored a scientific article. In 1943, Bob married Alice Boardman, whom he met as a freshman at Queens College. By the time of his death, they had shared 65 loving years together. Besides his wife, Bob leaves his son, Robert Malcolm Smuts, Professor of History at Univer sity of Massachusetts; Barbara Smuts, Professor of Psychology at University of Michigan; his grandson Robert, policy advisor to the mayor of New Haven; and his granddaughter Felicia, a freshman at Tulane University; his daughter-in-law Mary Beth Smuts; his sister, Marion Bur meister; her husband Charles; nephews, Stephen and Roger Burmeister, and Jeremy and Jeffrey Cody. Memorial service will be held at Glacier Hills, 1200 Earhart Rd., Kaye Hanson Room on Friday, November 21 from 2-4 p.m. In lieu of flowers, checks made out to the Turner Geriatric Clinic and designated for the Robert Smuts Memorial Fund can be sent to the Clinic at 1500 East Medical Center Drive, Room 1325, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0924. Turner will administer this fund on behalf of Silver Club Day Care for people with memory loss and Glacier Hills Nursing Unit for patients with memory loss.