Charles O. Smith

Longtime Elm Street resident Charles O. Smith died on Jan. 31, 2025, at the age of 75.
Mr. Smith moved to Winchester in 1989, a few years after coming north from his southern roots in Georgia and Tennessee.
After a four-year Navy tour in Vietnam, he earned a master's degree in architecture and urban planning at Georgia Institute of Technology, after which he studied in Paris. He worked in Cambridge, Baltimore, West Virginia and Ontario and recently published "A Narrative History of Attack Squadron One Sixty Five in Vietnam," the remarkable story of the Naval Aviation squadron in which he served for three years during the war.
If you saw Mr. Smith in town, it was often in his vintage red Jaguar. But what most enriched his retired life was playing rock guitar weekly with his closest friends.
He will be buried at the Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne, Mass., on Feb. 14.