Soviet Official, Robert Wagner Join Samantha Smith Mourners

A Soviet diplomat and actor Robert Wagner were among about 1,000 persons paying final respects Wednesday to Samantha Smith, the schoolgirl who traveled to the Soviet Union for peace.

Reading a statement from Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Vladimir Kulagin, first secretary for cultural affairs at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, recalled Samantha’s two-week tour of the Soviet Union in July, 1983, describing her as a “brilliant beam of sunshine.”

Samantha and her father, Arthur, were among eight persons killed in a plane crash Sunday.

Kulagin said he hoped that the 13-year-old girl, who visited his country with her parents as guests of the Soviet government, would prove to be “a symbol of the future in Soviet-American relations.”

Invited by Andropov

Samantha had been invited to make the trip by the late Yuri V. Andropov, then the Soviet leader, to whom she had written about her fears of war.

Wagner, who was filming a television series with Samantha in England, accompanied her mother, Jane, and other relatives to St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday. Wagner flew from Switzerland to attend the services.

The 70-minute ecumenical service included prayers, readings, hymns and testimonials from friends and from Gov. Joseph E. Brennan. The governor called Samantha “a very special young girl who provided inspiration and hope, not just for the very young but, indeed, for all of us.

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

Accomplished Many Things

William Preble, Samantha’s faculty adviser at the Maranacook Community School in Readfield, next to the Smiths’ hometown of Manchester, said that he and a group of Samantha’s classmates, in “trying to make some sense of this great loss,” had concluded that she had accomplished many things others only dream of.

“She was always on the go and full of spunk and life,” Preble said. “Somehow, she managed to capture our collective fear” of nuclear war.

The Rev. Peter Misner, a Methodist minister and the Smiths’ neighbor, officiated at the service, urging the mourners to remember the good Samantha achieved.

Loudspeakers outside the church piped the service to the more than 100 persons unable to be seated inside.