Soviet Envoy Attends Rites for Samantha

A Soviet diplomat and actor Robert Wagner joined hundreds of mourners today at a memorial service for 13-year-old peace advocate Samantha Smith and her father, Arthur.

“We saw this small girl as the great ambassador,” Vladimir Kulagin, the first secretary to the Soviet ambassador to the United States, told reporters before the service. “She was like a ray of sunshine, her smile, her frank openness.”

Kulagin received permission from the State Department to attend the memorial service in Kennebec County, one of 10 counties in Maine off limits to Soviet citizens.

The Rev. Peter Misner, a Methodist minister and a neighbor of the Smith family, officiated at the service.

Soviets Send Wreath

A pair of white doves adorned a wreath of red and white carnations that the Soviet Embassy sent to St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church for the service in Augusta, a few miles from Samantha’s home at Manchester.

Samantha attracted international attention when she wrote to then-Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov about her fear of nuclear war and accepted a tour of the Soviet Union as Andropov’s guest in July, 1983.

In remarks during the service, Maine Gov. Joseph E. Brennan called Samantha “a very special young girl who provided inspiration and hope not just for the very young, like herself, but for all of us.”

‘Warmed Coldest Hearts’

“The innocence of her youth, the sincerity of her beliefs, the magic of her smile melted the barriers between nations and warmed the hearts of the coldest diplomats,” the governor said.

Samantha and her father were among eight people killed Sunday night in the crash of a Beechcraft 99 that went down less than a half-mile from Auburn-Lewiston airport. Samantha’s father had left his job as an English instructor at the University of Maine to manage her budding career as a television actress.

At the time of the crash, Samantha and her father were returning to Maine from London, where she had been filming episodes of a new ABC-TV series “Lime Street,” in which she played Wagner’s daughter.