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June 22, 2001/Tamuz 1, 5761, Vol. 53, No.38
Eating quiche in Bisbee
FLO ECKSTEIN
Publisher
Her vision was as expansive as the sky under which she was born. Evelyn Smith, a native of Great Falls, Mont., went to college in Seattle, Wash., and spent her adult life in Phoenix. Yet this inherently Western woman lived as a citizen of the world.
Evelyn died June 13 following a courageous two-year battle with cancer.
For half a century, she had invested her heart, soul and financial resources in the Jewish and general communities in a multitude of causes, each selected with discernment. Her passions were human rights, inter-group relations, Jewish community building, politics, education, arts and culture. The common denominator always was improving the well-being of individuals and groups.
She demanded the best of herself and of those with whom she worked, and ultimately extended her influence nationally, in service to the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Project Interchange and the Cosanti Foundation.
In the Valley, she and her late husband, Herb, were driving forces of the Jewish Community Relations Council's interfaith missions to Israel, which hosts Valley civic leaders on in-depth tours, introducing them to the geopolitical, economic, religious and cultural opportunities and challenges facing the Jewish state. Mission alumnae were among the mourners at her funeral last week.
Evelyn's formidable drive enabled her to travel abroad just 18 months ago as one of a small group on a private humanitarian mission to the tiny, poverty-stricken Jewish community of Cuba. I was there on a separate trip organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix. We encountered one another at two Havana synagogues. And I vividly recall Evelyn, scarf wrapped elegantly around her head (she had completed a course of chemotherapy just prior to the trip), relaxing at the Hotel Nationale in Havana.
On May 6, the last time I saw Evelyn, she was with several members of her family at a fund-raiser for Hillel at Arizona State University. She was frail and weak but she was there, and she made a gift of money to assist Hillel's work with college students and young adults.
While money is important, Evelyn's legacy best can be measured by the depth of her faith in people and the impact of her good deeds. And while her life choices affirm her high personal standards and deep belief that human beings are capable of excellence, she taught her friends, colleagues and family members the essential lesson that exemplary living resides in the details.
At her funeral service, one of her grandsons shared a tender memory of accompanying Evelyn and Herb on a visit to Bisbee, a mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border that claims one respectable hotel. Eschewing the town's numerous fast-food eateries, Evelyn and Herb took their grandson for every meal to Bisbee's finest - an upstairs restaurant with quiche on the menu.
Evelyn leaves family and friends mourning her loss. For them and for us, she created a legacy on which we can - and must - build if we are to strengthen our community from within and fortify our ties with the many communities among which we live. That inheritance is setting the highest standards and then consistently making choices that enable us to meet them.
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