Richard Smith

Richard Harrison Smith, of Hackensack, MN, passed away Tuesday, July 19. He was born August 23, 1937, in Erie, Pennsylvania, to Norman and Marion Smith.

He received his bachelors degree from Allegheny College, in Meadville, PA, in 1959. He earned his MS degree in bio-chemistry at North Dakota State University, as well as an MS degree in Music Education at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in Music at Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio.

He came to Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, the summer of 1959 to study composition and choral directing from Paul J. Christiansen, the director of the Concordia Choir. It was there that he met his wife, June Skavang. The Smiths recently celebrated 51 years of marriage.

He served as Minister of Music at Olivet Lutheran Church in Fargo from 1963-1969. In 1969, he took over as director of the Jamestown College Choir. Through a combination of strict discipline and intense musical training, he developed the choir into a highly regarded ensemble. Less than 25% of the choir members were music majors. This is unusual among top-flight concert choirs. In 1972, on the choir's first tour of Europe, it became the first American choir of any kind to sing at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, an honor they repeated on several subsequent tours.
On October 13, 1994, Richard conducted a 25th anniversary reunion concert at the Jamestown Civic Center. Everyone who had ever sung in the choir was invited. Four hundred singers, more that 40% of the choir's alumni body participated. Richard has written and arranged many choral works and has earned special acclaim as an arranger of traditional American Negro spirituals. In 1984, he was appointed Academic Dean at Jamestown College, a position he held for 13 years. He also filled in occasionally during those years as a bio-chemistry teacher, exercising his old masters degree.

In July 1981, Richard, vacationing with his family in Northern Minnesota, suffered a catastrophic hemorrhage, due to a congenital liver condition. At the brink of death, he was rushed to a hospital in Fargo, ND, and then to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, for a then-highly experimental liver transplant procedure. He received his donated liver on October 19, 1981, in an operation done by Dr. Thomas Starzl, the pioneer of liver transplantation. At the time of his death, he was considered to be one of the longest living liver transplant survivors in the world.

In 1998, Richard retired from Jamestown College. He and June retired to their lake home in Hackensack, MN.
Richard was preceded in death by his parents, Norman and Marion Smith.

He is survived by his wife, June; daughters: Kristen (Mike) Cain of New York, Karen (Matt) Schenck of Hawley, MN, Kathryn (Ardean) Haugrud of Hawley, MN; sisters: Betty Mills of Atlanta, GA, Sandra (Bob) Seidel of Nashville, TN; and seven grandchildren.

Memorial service and inurnment will be held at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Hackensack, MN, at 11 AM on Saturday, July 23, 2011.