Alaska News

Norm Smith, educator, WWII vet dies at 86

Norman L. Smith, a decorated World War II paratrooper and esteemed Alaska educator, died at his home in Albion, Neb., on Dec. 21 after a 20-year battle with post-polio syndrome, his family said. He was 86.

Smith, a longtime resident of Haines, taught fifth-grade in one of the first special education programs in Alaska.

Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1925, Smith was drafted in the U.S. Army after he graduated from high school in Ballard, Wash. He volunteered to be a paratrooper and saw combat in Europe as a member of the 101st Airborne Division.

Smith was among those who liberated the concentration camp at Landsberg, Germany, on April 28, 1945. During a speech to the Juneau Rotary Club in October 2006, Smith recalled the smell of smoke as his unit approached the camp. "The smoldering building was full of human remains, stacked on top of each other, doused with gasoline."

Smith became a well-known Holocaust educator around the country, a frequent invited guest of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C..

He was also one of the few Americans to occupy Hitler's private home, the so-called "Eagle's Nest," at the end of the war. It was a sprawling estate with a shopping center, theaters, a medical center and the personal quarters of Hitler.

At the site, he acquired a rare leather-bound photo of Hitler, one of only 12 known to exist. About five years ago, Smith donated it to the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kan.

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"At one time it had a collector value of $25,000 dollars, but he wanted to donate it to the Eisenhower Museum," said Carlton Smith of Juneau, his younger son.

Last year, Smith was honored at the Holocaust Day of Remembrance Ceremony in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., an event commemorating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi camps.

After the war, he commercially fished for salmon in Hydaburg, west of Ketchikan. That was home to his high school sweetheart, Eileen Curtiss, originally from Skagway. They met in high school in Ballard, where both sang in the choir. They married in 1949 in Seattle.

In 1951, he contracted poliomyelitis, but went on to get a teaching degree from the University of Washington in Seattle and master's degree in special education from the University of Colorado at Greeley.

The family moved to Haines, where Smith taught fifth grade special education, said then-principal Steve McPheters. It was one of the first special education programs in Alaska during the early years of statehood.

"I remember him limping down the hall," said McPheters. "He himself had a handicap and I'm sure that helped him be empathetic for the kids. He was very personable, hands-on, worked with the kids. I had a lot of respect for him as an educator."

In Haines, Smith was involved with the local historical society, said Doris Ward, a retired English teacher who taught down the hall from Smith. He was interested in local military history, particularly gold rush-era Fort Seward (Port Chilkoot), she said. He researched the fort, which was built in the early 1900s and closed down after World War II. He lived with his family in one of the two-story Victorian houses on the fort's grounds. Smith's older son, Norman, and his wife Suzanne run a bed and breakfast out of that same house now.

In 1966, he married another teacher, Donna Wilson. They moved to Nebraska in 1973 where they both continued to teach.

Smith is preceded in death by his first wife, Eileen, and parents Howard Frederick Smith and Violet Q. Smith. He is survived by his wife, Donna Smith, of Albion; his sons, Norman Smith and his wife Suzanne of Haines, and Carlton Smith and his wife Marsha of Juneau; numerous grandchildren; brothers Lowell Smith of San Diego and Gary Smith of Madison, Wisc.; and sister Marlene Vickers of Renton, Wash.

By EMILY RUSSO MILLER

The Juneau Empire

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