Smith, Elizabeth Reitell

Elizabeth "Liz" Reitell Smith was born on September 11, 1920 in Elmira, New York to Charles and Jane Reitell. Smith graduated from the Lincoln School of Teachers College in New York City in 1937 and graduated from Bennington’s College in Bennington, Vermont in 1941 with a bachelor of arts degree. She majored in theatre design and minored in dance and drama literature. In subsequent years Smith designed costumes for a dance group, spent three years in the Army Air Corps during World War Two, studied art in France and in 1952 met the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, and produced his play "Under Milkwood." Smith and Thomas were close friends until his sudden death in 1953.

Smith was playwright Arthur Miller’s assistant in 1962 when she came to Montana for a Montana Wilderness Society sponsored horse-pack trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The trip inspired an immense passion for the Montana wilderness that led her to a position as the publications director of The University of Montana School of Forestry in Missoula, Montana. After five years in that position, Smith met and married her fourth husband, Eldon Smith, an environmentalist and wildlife biologist for Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.

For thirteen years, the pair traveled throughout the Western states speaking on the environment. In 1972 they were given the award for Outstanding Environmental Achievement. During those thirteen years, Elizabeth Smith worked as director of the Montana Wilderness Association.

In 1980 she was offered a position as writer/editor at the Columbia River Inter-tribal Fish Commission in Portland, Oregon. She retired in 1986 and returned to Missoula, Montana where she remained involved in environmental issues. Smith died in 2001.

From the guide to the Elizabeth Reitell Smith Papers, 1953-1987, (University of Montana--Missoula Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections)