Obituary of Eva Colleen Smith

Eva Colleen (Moore) Smith passed away Saturday, August 21, 2021 at home in Port Charlotte, Florida in the arms of her daughter Christina Smith and grandson Marshall Smith. Eva was born to Christena Mary (Koerner) Rotsart and Earl Franklin Moore in Smith River, California on May 10, 1930. Eva was predeceased by her parents and brothers Charles Leroy “Red” Moore of Pasadena, Texas in 1987 and George Earl Moore of Modesto, California in 1994. She has one surviving brother Patrick Moore of Morro Bay, California. Eva grew up a child of the depression. Life was hard but she learned to be resilient and resourceful. As a young girl, with her parents divorced, her mother moved the family to San Francisco where she could find work for herself and eventually her children under Roosevelt’s New Deal. Eva knew every hill and neighborhood by the time she was a teenager. She worked as a ticket taker at the Orpheum Theater on Market Street and at the Cow Palace doing something or another just so she could roller skate for free. She would save her money to get $1.50 to ride a horse through Golden Gate Park and down to the ocean. The city was life itself. Eva was in her early teens while WWII raged in Europe and in the South Pacific. With the men away at war and women at home, Christena (Eva’s mother) had a job transporting injured soldiers from the ships to the military hospital on Treasure Island. This period influenced Eva to join the Navy when she was eligible and at 20 years old joined the Navy WAVEs to support the country that had protected her during the war and supported her and her family through the depression and the years that followed. Eva arrived to boot camp at Saufley Field in Pensacola, Florida just after her 20th birthday where she met her future husband, Frederick William Smith of Newark, New Jersey. Eva completed her training to become an Air Traffic Controller but when she married Fred in December 1952 she was honorably discharged from the service because she was a married woman. In 1953 daughter Victoria (Savage) was born in Miami, followed by Christina (Smith) in Key West, and Linda (Murray) in Jacksonville. For the next 20 years life moved fast and slow. Eva moved her family, as happens in the military, many times - Florida, Alabama, Maryland, New York, Georgia, Southern California, and finally to Maine in 1970. Eva loved and was devoted to her family completely. Throughout her lifetime she lived in close proximity to her daughter Christina and grandson Marshall. This added immeasurable quality to her daily life. Eva enjoyed every family gathering and was always eagerly awaiting Victoria’s and Linda’s family visits. Eva’s education was completed in parts, at one point she was in college at the same time as her youngest daughter. With her signature tenacity, she received her Master’s Degree in Demography at the University of Florida in 1981. Eva was employed by Maine’s Department of Labor as a Demographer from 1982 until she retired in 2000. Her resourcefulness aided her in this work. When realizing that there was an awful lot of rote ‘number crunching’ in her job, in 1985, she purchased her first Apple Macintosh computer and taught herself how to create a spreadsheet to crunch all those numbers. She was quite pleased with that. Her family believes the purchase was prompted by the cut & paste feature to help the ever civic-minded Eva carefully craft her 400-word Letters to the Editor. That treasure trove of published pieces is epic. Eva had many talents and hobbies. Painting and gardening were often blurred. When she had a gardening project it came with sketches or drawings, sometimes in color, to help you see her vision. It was her art that sustained her and we all have pieces hanging in our homes, keeping her close. She would say that abstract art was where she was most freely able to express herself. Eva was also masterful at astrology, and chess. Eva will be missed immensely by her family. She is survived by her three daughters, Victoria of Portland, Maine, Christina of Port Charlotte, and Linda (spouse Terry) of Scarborough, Maine, her five grandchildren, Meaghan Murray, Nicholas Savage, Lindsey Murray, Anna Savage, and Marshall Smith and great grand-daughter, Isla Savage. Eva’s wishes were to be cremated. A celebration of life will follow at a later date.