Eulogy for Carter Smith, Jr.
By Carter Smith III
October 11, 2008

First of all, on behalf of our whole family, let me start by giving deep thanks to all of you for being here and for all the many kindnesses you have offered my mother and all of us. I thank all of you who have traveled great distances to be here, as well as to those here in the Northwest Corner who have done so much for my Mom and for all of us in the past few days. The expressions of love and caring for both my parents have shown what community really means and I can’t thank you enough. And I suspect that while my dad would publicly feign embarrassment at all the attention by telling some sort of self-deprecating joke, privately he would have been very, very pleased.

Of course, his sudden death has been a great shock to us all, but I have to say, I take comfort in the fact that when his time came, it came in the company of close friends getting ready to sit down and watch a presidential debate. I’m sure you all know how passionately my dad followed every twist and turn in this campaign season, and what a strong supporter he was of his preferred candidate, who in an effort to be non-partisan, I’ll simply refer to as “That One”.

That said, my dad was a man of great equanimity. He really valued principle over political party. He counted his close friends across the political spectrum. In fact, just last week, when he and my mom were in San Francisco for a niece’s wedding, he found the time to have lunch with an old friend from his Chicago days. When the friend asked if my mom was joining them, my dad responded, “No, but I’m bringing Sarah Palin.”

But my father wasn’t just obsessive about the McCain-Obama race. No one was more passionate about current events and the news. His ability to read the Times while simultaneously listening to NPR AND watching the most arcane Congressional Subcommittee hearing on CSPAN was legendary. Thank goodness he never quite mastered the Internet or he’d have had live video from MSNBC streaming on his desktop as well.

But regardless of how the news was delivered to him, or how many ways it was delivered simultaneously, what was amazing was that he was able to absorb it all. And it wasn’t even the daily headlines themselves that mattered. What counted for my father was the civil exchange of ideas.

Ideas mattered deeply to him and clearly what led my dad into the publishing industry. Whether it was working on books for Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers when he had kids who were Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers age, or later on American history books in association with the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian, one of my dad’s favorite things to do was to organize the ideas behind a new book project, scribbling out copious and somewhat illegible notes in longhand, on ledger-paper sized pads that others would be left to decipher and type up.

As much as my father loved to discuss the ideas of the day, he wasn’t one who liked to debate for the sake of debating, Instead, whether the topic at hand was national politics, religion, philosophy or anything else, the central question for my dad was how is it that we as individuals, as communities of individuals, or as a nation, can live lives of fundamental honesty and decency. When I think of my father, yes, I will remember him always as funny, as smart, as loving, as charming, and as so many things, but more than anything else, I will remember him for what he was -- a good and decent man.

What really concerned my father was what we owe each other as members of the human community. Where does the line lie between individual liberty and community responsibility? Though he was always interested in hearing every side of a question, he rejected anything than smacked of moral relativism. In fact, I have fond memories of sitting in a café on the Left Bank in Paris with him, my mom, my wife and my then 10 year old daughter Erin, listening to Erin and my dad endlessly discuss the question, “Do you see life as a glass that is half full or a glass half empty.” My daughter, scientist that she is, rejected the premise completely, arguing that the answer depended on the evidence. For her, the answer depended on what had happened to the glass previously – whether someone had just drunk half of the water, in which case the glass was half empty, or whether someone had just poured it, in which case the glass was half full. This of course, annoyed my dad to no end, and after a half hour back and forth between the two of them, the rest of us intervened to insist they agree to disagree.

So when I think of that story, it reminds me that my father was always one who saw the glass as half full. Despite evidence to the contrary, I think he always believed that we could be a more just, more equitable, and more decent society. Perhaps some feeling grew out of his experience as a son of the Deep South. On Wednesday, when I arrived here, I found on his desk a thin manila folder marked “Writings”. Among the aging papers there was a letter he wrote in 1961 in response to an annual fund solicitation from his alma mater, The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, a school he deeply loved his whole life. In it however, he notes that he how disappointed he was in the institution for its refusal to accept African-American students.

“As a Southern institution founded on Christian teachings of morality,” he wrote, “our university’s moral obligation on the race question is not in dispute. To me, my concern is less about what three or four negro students might learn by being admitted to the university, as much as what the other 495 students there might learn from them.” Resistance to racial equality in America, both in the South and in the North, bothered by father enough that four years later, he felt morally obligated to return to Alabama to march behind Dr. King at Selma.

I want to tell one final story about my dad that also speaks to his belief in the glass half full. For many years, he volunteered to spend one night a month at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue, looking after homeless men who took shelter at the church. One evening, he was next door at the National Museum of Design for a book party to celebrate the publication a book he’d produced, “Mark Hampton: On Design”, by the renowned designer. Stepping outside the museum after the party, a voice called him, “Hey, Carter, come here!!” Two of his homeless friends had spotted him and wanted him to settle an argument. Despite his pride in the Mark Hampton book, my father felt more at home with his homeless friends next door.

When it came to religion, he described himself as “a hopeful agnostic”. His hope led him to join the vestry here at this church and to continue to emerge himself in the big questions until the very end. After I’d written much of this eulogy, I came upon his notes to a class on China that he was currently in the middle of. In a three ring binder, he has these words from the philosopher Lao Tzu highlighted:

One is capable of doing justice,
To be just is to be kingly
To be kingly is to be heavenly
To be heavenly is to be one with the Tao
To be one with the Tao is to abide forever
Such a one will be safe and whole
Even after the dissolution of the body.

This morning, as we celebrate my father’s life and mourn his passing, I know one thing more surely than ever, my father’s glass is spilling over, and his spirit will be safe and whole forever.