Henry Russell Bradley Smith ’50 died on July 6, 2004, on Peaks Island in Maine.
Born on April 11, 1922, in Flushing, Long Island, NY, he prepared for college at the New York Military Academy in Cromwell-on-Hudson and at Rye (NY) High School and served in the U.S. Marines Corps during World War II from 1942 to 1946. He entered Bowdoin in February of 1947 and became a member of Zeta Psi Fraternity. Following his graduation in 1950, he attended Yale University’s School of Fine Arts and the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston and served again in the Marine Corps from 1953 to 1955, attaining the rank of staff sergeant. He was an associate editor of Ski Magazine in Hanover, NH, for three years before becoming assistant to the director of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont in 1958. He became curator of the arts and crafts collections at Heritage Plantation of Sandwich, MA, in 1972 and was responsible for the development of educational programs, special exhibits, and the cataloguing and display of collections in the Plantation’s new arts and crafts building. He moved to Peaks Island in 1982. He was the author of Blacksmith’s and Farrier’s Tools at the Shelburne Museum and co-author of 18th and 19th Century Art at the Shelburne Museum. Surviving are his wife, Rita Mae Hines Smith, whom he married in 1956; five sons, Grosvenor Smith, Kevin B. Smith ’80 of Dallas, TX, Harvey Smith, Adam Smith, and Jaime Smith; a brother, Perry E.H. Smith; and five grandchildren.