Her families say farewell

On the Saturday after spring break, Pat Smith came to the Corona del Mar High School attendance office where she had worked for the last nine years. She straightened out the office, took care of the phone messages and left a note saying she would be out sick Monday.

By the time she died Monday, Smith ? a nonsmoker ? had battled lung cancer for several years. She maintained a full schedule, however, attending as many as four school events a week. Her son Kirk said he tried to persuade her to take it easy toward the end, to little avail.

“She had been in chemo for three years,” he said. “After that, most people are laid up in bed, much less working 60 hours a week. She was just a mule.”

Smith, the attendance clerk at Corona del Mar High and a longtime community activist, died of cancer Monday afternoon at the age of 69. Behind her, she left a number of legacies: the annual cancer walk that she co-founded, the hundreds of students whom she rerouted back to class, the float that she helped to build for this year’s Rose Parade.

And finally, there was the tidy office that she left on Saturday ? a fitting symbol for a woman who never wanted to miss a day of work, no matter how painful.

“She was tough and feisty almost in a grandmotherly way,” said Assistant Principal Jack Cusick. “Sometimes she would refer to herself as Crazy Pat, but she was very lovable, very willing to give her time and efforts. Her manner was very much maternal when it came to the students and the school ? very protective, and at the same time, very motivating.”

Smith’s official job was in the attendance office, but there were few areas of Corona del Mar High where students and staff didn’t recognize her. She regularly attended plays and athletic events at the school and ran the Preliminary SAT tests on the weekends.

Toward the end of her life, she grew as famous for her charity work as for her school job. In 2002, she co-founded the Relay for Life in Newport Beach, a 24-hour fundraising walk to gather money for cancer research. Late last year, she joined the city’s Centennial Float Committee, taking the bus every afternoon to work on the float after having chemotherapy in the morning.

“She was pretty much a hard charger,” her son Mike Smith said. “She loved her grandkids and her family a whole bunch, but once she started on a project, pretty much nothing was going to stop her.”

In truth, not many things did stop Smith from going ? and she was tested more than once. Widowed at a young age, the Washington native supported her two sons by running a pair of gift shops in Balboa, keeping medical records at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian and finally moving to Corona del Mar High. She initiated the Relay for Life after surviving ovarian cancer in the 1980s.

Smith also went an extra mile for the Newport Beach centennial float: The night before the parade, she stood up all night in the rain to help guard it.

“With everything she went through, she was just never down,” said city recreation director Marie Knight, who worked with Smith on the project. “She was a great spirit.”

A memorial service for Smith is planned for Monday at 3 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. In lieu of flowers, her sons have asked for donations to next month’s Relay for Life.dpt.20-smith-CPhotoInfoS81Q4K7C20060420ixzt3rnc(LA)Pat Smith co-founded the Relay for Life.