Obituaries : Page Smith; History Professor, Prolific Author

Page Smith, history professor and prolific writer who published more than 20 books, including biographies, studies on the perils and joys of aging, and the history of subjects as diverse as the American Revolution and chickens, has died. He was 77.

Smith’s death Monday was preceded Saturday by the death of his wife of 53 years, Eloise Pickard Smith, 74, an artist and former director of the California Arts Council.

Both died of cancer at the home of their daughter, Anne Easley, in Santa Cruz, Calif.

The couple had lived on a seven-acre farm outside Santa Cruz since 1964, when Smith left UCLA to become founding provost of Cowell College at UC Santa Cruz.

The Page Smith Library stands across the courtyard from the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery as their lasting memorials on the picturesque Santa Cruz campus.

Smith was teaching history at UCLA when he first won national recognition as a writer with the 1962 publication of his two-volume biography on John Adams. The work earned him the Bancroft Prize for historical writing.

With unusual popular appeal for a scholastic writer, Smith wrote three books that became main selections of the Book of the Month Club--the Adams biography, “A New Age Now Begins, a People’s History of the American Revolution” in 1976, and “The Shaping of America” in 1980.

One of his more curious books was one he co-wrote in 1975 with Charles Daniel, a UC Santa Cruz biology professor, titled, “The Chicken Book: Being an Inquiry Into the Rise and Fall, Use and Abuse, Triumph and Tragedy of Gallus Domesticus.”

Smith’s last two books, “Democracy on Trial” and “Old Age in Another Country--A Traveler’s Guide,” arrived in bookstores last month.

In 1988, Smith began writing a syndicated weekly newspaper column on aging under the titles “Time to Live” and “Coming of Age,” which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Arizona Republic and the Dallas Morning News, among others.

Educated at Dartmouth with graduate degrees from Harvard, Smith earned a purple heart in World War II, serving as a company commander with the 10th Mountain Division in Italy.

He taught history at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and at UCLA before going to Santa Cruz.

Smith retired from Santa Cruz in 1973 to protest the firing of a friend who was dismissed for failing to publish enough scholarly papers.

In addition to Mrs. Easley, the Smiths are survived by three other children, Ellen Davidson and Eliot Smith of Santa Cruz, and Carter Smith of Nahant, Mass.

Joint services are planned for 10:30 a.m. Sept. 9 at Calvary Episcopal Church in Santa Cruz.

Memorial contributions may be sent to the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, UC Santa Cruz, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz, Calif. 95064, or to the Hospice Caring Project of Santa Cruz County, 6851 Soquel Drive, Aptos, Calif. 95003.