Category: 1960s

Once in a lifetime. One of a kind. There was no one like her. Marcia Hill Smith of Santa Fe, NM, 83, passed away July 3, 2024 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. She is survived by her husband Herb, son Greg (Lauren McMahon), daughter Ashley Baptiste (Gus Calabrese) and her four loving grandchildren Coleston, Cameron, Elaine, and Brett.

Marcia was born in Saint Louis, MO in 1941 to Irma and Homer Hill of Normandy, MO. She graduated from high school there and attended Northwestern University where she earned a degree in journalism and met her husband of 59 years, Herb Smith.

Marcia and Herb lived on Chicago’s Gold Coast until settling a short time later in Saint Louis area, where Marcia opened her interior design firm, Marcia Smith Designs, Inc., had her children, and moved the family to suburban Clayton, MO. A few years later she moved her design firm to Laclede’s Landing, and later to Ladue, MO where she started Virtuoso, a table-top shop of one-of-a-kind décor for the dining table. She was active for many years in the National Association of Women Business Owners at both the local and national level.
In the mid-1980’s she and Herb built a unique contemporary Bauhaus-inspired home on Lindell Boulevard where they lived until 2003, then enjoyed apartment living in the city’s Central West End before moving permanently to their vacation residence in Santa Fe.

Marcia was inspired by the natural beauty and art scene of Santa Fe.
She dressed to the nines and wore wonderful hats almost every day.
When music, art, design, and dance touched her soul, she shared them with the people in her world. She dedicated herself to bring inspiring design into peoples’ lives every day. Her home and commercial designs focused on being true to yourself and focusing on today. She loved to dance, visit art galleries and museums, and listen to jazz and classical music.

She wrote her own rules and stuck by them with conviction. Manners mattered to her. She was gracious and treated you the way she wanted to be treated. She was bold, and she challenged people around her to be bold, and her lifelong friends were her biggest cheerleaders.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/santafenewmexican/name/marcia-smith-obituary?id=55636357

Owen Yost, 77, passed away at his home in Denton, Texas on July 17th.

Born January 1945 he spent his childhood near Chicago, in Kenilworth Illinois. He attended New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois and attended college at University of Missouri (Bachelor of Journalism ’67), Northwestern University (Master of Journalism ’68), and University of Texas Arlington (Master of Landscape Architecture ’82) and served in the U.S. Army.

The son of Llyod Morgan Yost and Winogene Springer, and brother to Elyn Mulder, Karyl Thorsen, Chari Binstadt. Owen leaves behind his beloved partner Nancy Collins, his son Creighton Yost, and grandchildren Carson Yost, Asher Yost, Collin Whisenhunt, Lauren Whisenhunt, and their families.

A lifelong athlete, he played baseball and football as a child and was well known for his swimming, setting records in high school and winning medals at the Texas Senior Games. He was a regular at the Texas Woman’s University pool and gym and deeply enjoyed the kindness and comradery of his TWU swimming friends and the University staff.  

He enjoyed nature in its natural wild state throughout his life. A favorite memory was his canoe trips with friends in college to boundary lakes in Canada for fishing and exploring. Always interested in geography and vocabulary he was quick to share what he learned about scientific names of trees and birds and worked throughout his life to conserve natural spaces to ensure their future.

An accomplished writer, writing advertising copy in Chicago in his early years, and later an accomplished landscape architect, guest lecturing at University of North Texas, writing a landscaping column for the Denton Record-Chronical newspaper, and working for Denton as a city planner. He designed the landscape for many Denton street plantings, and the Benny Simpson Garden on the TWU campus, leaving his lasting mark on his community.

To plant Memorial Trees in memory of George Owen Yost, please click here to visit our Sympathy Store.

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Gail Petersen Harwell, 81, passed away peacefully on Tuesday, April 26, 2022, at RiverView Care Center in Crookston, where she had been a resident since October of 2021.

She was born October 7, 1940, to Norma and Jerry Petersen at Minette’s Maternity Home in Fertile, where she also attended school, first grade through 12th. From early years, she had a curiosity for the world and would stand on the front porch and say, “Just wait for me world, I’ll get there.”

To achieve that goal, Gail was a determined high achiever in high school, which led to a full scholarship at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism. After earning her Bachelor of Science in 1962, she launched a career as an advertising writer in Chicago. She was named a Vice President of J. Walter Thompson Company-Chicago in 1969, where she worked primarily in television, writing for such accounts as Sears dishwashers, Kraft Foods, Sunbeam, and Jovan fragrances. In 1977, she moved to Boston and Arnold & Company; in 1979 to Manhattan and JWT New York; in 1983 to Los Angeles and Evans Advertising; and in 1993 to Marin County in the Bay Area.

Gail met her husband Richard Sterling Harwell in 1971 at Great Lakes, IL, at the end of a sailing race. They were separated by geography and circumstances, but fate brought them together again 20 years later, and they were married in 1993 at Concordia Lutheran Church in Fertile.

In 1995, Gail changed careers, becoming an independent editorial consultant in the engineering-construction field. She often worked alongside Sterling; writing, editing, formatting, and producing proposals, feasibility studies, and marketing materials for multibillion-dollar construction projects. She worked in Asia, Europe, Australia, and Central America, as well as across the U.S., continuing until her final retirement at the age of 73. From that time, Gail and Sterling enjoyed a life of tennis, travel, volunteering, and relaxation overlooking San Francisco Bay. They were members of the Belvedere Tennis Club and the San Francisco Yacht Club. Gail was an avid reader, and she belonged to a local book club for 10 years.

Friends will remember her for her meticulous planning and orchestration of many wonderful birthday parties, club gatherings and class reunions.

Both Gail and Sterling will be remembered by family for initiating and maintaining the “Petersen-Harwell Perpetual Ping Pong Tournament,” complete with engraved trophy. Gail made sure the results with photos were posted in the Fertile Journal.

Family and friends recall her kindness, generosity, acute sense of humor, infectious laugh, courage, and fierce determination. She had a certain “twinkle in her eyes,” and she will be dearly missed by all who knew and loved her.

Gail was preceded in death by her husband, R. Sterling Harwell, by her older sister, and best friend, Marlys Ozga, and by an infant nephew. She is survived by brothers, Harold (Candy) of Brookline, MA, and Michael (Carol) of Fertile, and brother-in-law, Edward Ozga of Plymouth, MN, nine nieces and nephews, a host of grandnieces and grandnephews, and one great-grandniece.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Parkinson’s disease research or Hospice of the Red River Valley.

Source: Eriksen-Vik-Ganje Funeral Homes

David Searl, the author of expat Bible ‘You & The Law in Spain’ which provides a step-by-step guide to all aspects of legal matters in Spain, has died at the age of 82.

Born in Ashtabula, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie, he studied at the Medill School of Journalism at the prestigious Northwestern University, which is where he met his wife Janet Mendel.

They both worked in Chicago’s newspapers before deciding in 1966 to take a year off to live in Spain. It was a chance encounter in a Chicago bar that led them to decide on Mijas, then a quiet hillside village above the Costa del Sol.

“We were thinking about Spain, and then one night in a bar, we heard some people speaking Spanish on the table next to us. It was an American man chatting to some visiting flamenco performers and he raved about this place Mijas where he had spent some time in Spain,” Janet recalls.

“Based on that conversation, the very next day we decided that Mijas was our destination,” she told the Olive Press by telephone.

The pair took a freighter across the Atlantic to Casablanca, then a rickety bus to Tangiers before crossing over the Straits of Gibraltar from Morocco to Spain’s Algeciras. “We arrived in Mijas by taxi where we lived pretty well on our savings. We had intended on only staying for a year, but well, things didn’t turn out like that.”

After a year-long stint teaching at an American school in Switzerland, the pair returned to Mijas and made it their permanent home, buying a plot of land and building their home, where Janet still lives.

It was here that they raised their two boys, Daniel and Benjamin, and forged writing careers, with Janet focusing on Spanish food and David on legal issues affecting the expat community as well as freelancing as a foreign correspondent.

He was sent down the coast to Palomares to report on an incident that saw American nuclear bombs dropped accidentally from a B-52 in 1966 as well as by a Canadian newspaper to follow up on a rumour that then Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau was holidaying with a mistress in Spain.

David and Janet separated in the mid-1980s but both stayed in Mijas where David met artist Mary Eisman, who became his partner for the rest of his life.

He also went on to write 24 editions of what became the expat must-read on all legal matters, a book that appears on the bookcases of expats across Spain.

“He was an impish character with a whimsical sense of humour,” recalls former colleague and Costa del Sol journalist David Baird. “As I understand it, he began contributing to Lookout, which at that time was required reading for expats here in the 70s.”

“The editor, Ken Brown, asked him to answer some of the queries received relating to Spanish law that affected expats. Thanks to his investigations and consultations with lawyers, gestores and tax advisors on the Costa, his knowledge grew until he was something of an expert. He began writing a regular column in Lookout answering readers’ queries about everything from residence requirements to driving licenses.”

“In 1985 with his accumulated knowledge, he compiled the book ‘You & the Law in Spain,’ published by Santana Books. This became what the Times declared was ‘the Bible for foreigners in Spain,'” said Baird.

Another former colleague and foreign correspondent Edward Owen remembered: “David happily advised foreign journalists in Spain who were often covering gruesome stories involving their own countrymen who were caught up in property scams, home seizures and expensive legal tangles.”

“David was a charming and amiable colleague who did not seek to hugely profit from his valuable work. He enjoyed helping others and beating the oft-changing system. At Lookout’s famous lunches in Fuengirola, he would often regale the throng with tales of woe – and how he had helped yet another Brit get out of jail or regain ownership of his villa.”

Searl had the ability to write about complex Spanish legal matters in plain English that was easy to understand, and his work was also translated into French, German and Russian.

Up until his death, Searl was working on the 25th edition, which was to be published later this year.

He was also an active member of his community and regular guest on local radio as well as advising the Foreign Residents’ Department at Mijas Town Hall and other local community groups.

He died on March 18 at the age of 82 and leaves behind Mary, his two sons and three grandchildren.

Source: Olive Press

David M “Dave” Otto, 83, passed away peacefully, November 26, 2021, at a local hospital in Green Bay, Wisc. Born February 18, 1938, to Carl and Helen (Williams) Otto in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. Graduated from Lincoln High School in 1956 and Ripon College in 1960 with a BA degree in Political Science. Dave was Phi Beta Kappa and earned an MSJ from Medill in 1962.

Dave enlisted in the Army reserve and served for 6 years.

He joined the Green Bay Press-Gazette on January 1, 1962, the beginning of a 40-year career as a reporter. He covered the courthouse for 5 years, twice earning Gavel Awards from the American Bar Association. He was the only Press-Gazette writer to win this award. The rest of his career was as the Press-Gazette Outdoors Writer. His weekly column, Plugs & Slugs, was very popular, as was his annual Report from the Lake. Among his many awards were the Scripps Howard Award for conservation writing, and the Gordon MacQuarrie Award from the Wisconsin Academy of Arts and Sciences.He was a co-founder and past president of the Wisconsin Outdoor Communications Association. He also wrote numerous free-lance stories for magazines like Wisconsin Sportsman and Outdoor Life.

He was a member of First United Methodist Church for over 50 years, volunteering in many ways. He was a co-founder of the church’s Food Pantry, now called the Goodwill Place. After retiring in 1998, he volunteered for 15 years at Howe School, working with 4th and 5th graders on their reading and writing. He was known by students and staff alike as Mister Dave.

He married Karen Van Epps in 1962 in Weyauwega, WI. He married Barbara O’Leary on May 23, 1987 on the shores of Green Bay at Peninsula State Park in Door County.

He is survived by his wife and his 3 children – Jon (Laurie) Otto of Lake Mills, WI; Christine (Brian) Frye of Federal Way, WI; and Kathryn (Douglas) McLeod of Middleton, WI; and grandsons Logan and Davis Otto, David Frye, and Jon (JJ) McLeod.

A memorial service is being planned for the spring of 2022 and will be announced by the family. Memorials in David’s name may be directed to First United Methodist Church Goodwill Food Pantry.

Reprinted from the Green Bay Press-Gazette

https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/obituaries/wis341491