Elizabeth "Liz" Hall Hibbard

A Pooh bear with a tag that said “For Elizabeth” sat under Robert “Bob” and Elizabeth “Betty” Hall’s Christmas tree in December 1929 as they excitedly prepared for their first, and what turned out to be their only, child’s arrival. Six months later, in early July 1930, their daughter, Elizabeth Hall—the fifth Elizabeth in a row on her mom’s side—entered the world. This family of three lived in a small bungalow near the Oakland/Berkeley boundary line within easy walking distance of the UC Berkeley campus, where Bob had done his undergraduate and graduate work. That location set the tone for much of the rest of Elizabeth’s life.

Elizabeth was bright and inquisitive from the very start. Her father read to her every night, so it’s no surprise she became a voracious reader, often choosing to spend time with her nose in a book rather than being outside with friends. She loved taking family walks up into the Berkeley hills and going on car excursions as far away as the Yosemite area of the Sierras, as her father taught her about the flora and fauna. The family attended an Episcopal church where Elizabeth attended Sunday school during her formative years. Elizabeth’s father was a lawyer and an accomplished pianist, and her mother was a trained mezzo soprano. Elizabeth’s mother had been adopted by a very wealthy family so had lived the life of a socialite before getting married. That meant Elizabeth was exposed to stories of her mother’s years at boarding school, summers at the family’s summer house in New England, and travels across the U.S. and Europe. Elizabeth soaked all of that up like a sponge.

One of Elizabeth’s earliest companions was the family cat, and each cat after that became a valued confidant in her life. Extended family bonds were also important, so Elizabeth became a prolific letter writer to keep in touch with her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother who lived in Southern California. Liz was especially close with her uncle’s family on her mother’s side. Until Elizabeth’s uncle was called back up into the Navy in early 1941 and moved his family to Virginia, the two families had weekly Sunday dinners and spent holidays together. On Elizabeth’s father’s side, she connected with her dad’s older sister who passed on her love of cooking to an eager learner, making her think she might want to be a dietician. Beyond that, Elizabeth built close friendships with the neighborhood children, as they spent many happy hours together playing games on the dining room table, fence-walking the length of the block, riding bikes, building forts, playing make-believe in her tree house, and cheering “Hooray for Cal!” and “Go Bears!” as people from that area walked to football games on sunny fall afternoons. Those relationships lasted long after Elizabeth moved away as an adult.

School was a place where Elizabeth excelled. She loved to learn and was so successful as a student that in elementary school she was skipped up half a year to a higher section of her grade, once in first grade, then again in second grade. When the school wanted to move Elizabeth up again another half year in fourth grade, her parents said no, so the staff provided extra academic experiences to enrich her learning. She loved all school activities, including folk dancing and being a member of the banking club and of the rowing crew. Outside of school, Elizabeth learned to play the piano and took tap dance lessons.

In the midst of all of that when Elizabeth was six-years-old, her father was diagnosed with an inoperable benign brain tumor, which required him to stop working two years later. After his long decline, he passed away not long after Elizabeth’s eleventh birthday. Elizabeth’s mother was only 41, had never had a job, and her adoptive family had lost their wealth in the 1929 stock market crash. She was now on her own but modeled what it was to be resilient as she figured out how to move through and forward by getting a job at the California State Department of Public Health as a lab assistant then later ran a gift shop, doing her best to make their home a happy and supportive place to be. Elizabeth used her innate organizational skills to help manage household responsibilities like the cooking, cleaning, and gardening. Soon after, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, Elizabeth’s mom found ways for the two of them to support the war effort, including rolling bandages and recycling metal. Elizabeth was well aware of the stresses of those years but credited her mom for teaching her that a positive attitude and tenacity are what’s called for when life is difficult.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth began her junior high school years, where she made more good friends, sang in Glee Club, played on the girls’ basketball team, and continued to earn good grades. Elizabeth also belonged to a local dance studio. It was during those years she was given a chemistry set and a microscope, which she used to conduct basic experiments and examine things at home, feeding her interest in the sciences. Also during that time, a dear friend invited Elizabeth to attend her Presbyterian Church’s youth group, which Elizabeth did and stayed active throughout high school, including singing in the youth choirs. When Elizabeth attended Berkeley High School, she joined the Theta Gamma sorority, where she forged lifelong friendships. She sang in the school’s a cappella choir and yearly operetta, worked on the school newspaper and yearbook, and attended most of the sporting events to cheer on the teams, all while receiving high marks for her academic work. Outside of school, Elizabeth was part of a music appreciation club. She also decided she wanted to learn more about her faith so took communicant lessons to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church while also staying active in the Presbyterian Church.

Every time Elizabeth and her dad had walked on the UC Berkeley campus, he’d asked her, “How long until you get to attend school here?” So when Elizabeth started college at Cal, it was a prophecy fulfilled. She maintained her friendships from earlier years as she built new ones. Liz worked in the college’s labs doing a variety of things to help pay for her tuition. She also participated in co-curricular activities related to her majors, especially with the School of Public Health. She showed her Golden Bear pride as she and her friends attended a wide array of sporting events. And it was during that time that Elizabeth slowly tried on the name “Liz”, which eventually became her moniker. She graduated in 1951 with degrees in Bacteriology and Public Health and became a proud Cal Alumnus.

Liz then left the Bay Area to complete her six-month internship at the Fresno County Public Health Department. While she liked the team she worked with, she was delighted when she was offered a job at the Santa Cruz Public Health Department, back near the Northern California coast. Liz was quickly promoted up the ranks, and before she moved on from there, she was the lab’s director. It was one of her coworkers who invited Liz to a single’s group gathering at First Presbyterian Church Santa Cruz, where she met David “Dave” Hibbard, a junior high Social Science teacher. They dated for a short period of time and were married that fall of 1952. The couple lived in a small home in Seacliff for the next few years until Dave took a teaching job with the Salinas Union High School District, and Liz began work as a biochemist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Just days before Christmas 1955, the house they had built in North Salinas was ready for them to move into---none-to-soon, because their daughter and only child, Carole, was born in February 1956.

Liz filled their home with love and fun, embracing the role of homemaker and all that that entailed. She decorated for every season, holiday, and birthday and enjoyed hosting gatherings of neighbors and other friends. It was Liz and Dave’s intention to invest themselves in their new community, which is something they continued to do the rest of their lives. They became active members of First Presbyterian Church Salinas. Within a few years, they were asked, along with several other couples, to help plant a new Presbyterian Church in North Salinas, which was a growing section of town. That led to Liz and Dave’s commitment to the establishment and life of Northminster Presbyterian Church Salinas, built right across the street from the brand new North Salinas High School, which Dave helped open in 1959. Many of the North High faculty had been recruited from outside the area so didn’t have local roots, but friendships between staff members and their families grew into a self-created extended family. Liz, often in a leadership role, was part of the Faculty Wives group that planned family events that helped foster those relationships that are still intact today.

Liz was a very supportive wife, always willing to encourage and offer Dave help with work and organizations that mattered to him. As a mom, Liz introduced Carole to all sorts of things to provide positive learning opportunities at home and in the world beyond. Those included exposure to poetry and literature, art, history, science, math, and of course, music. Many happy times were spent at the piano as Liz played and she and Carole sang, which led Carole to pursue music as one of her own avocations. Liz also arranged play dates with other moms and their children and encouraged Carole to invite friends to come over to play. Countless weekends were spent tide-pooling and having picnics at Monterey Bay. Summer vacations often included camping adventures with stops to visit friends and extended family along North America’s West Coast, with Liz being the master organizer of the supplies for each two-to-three week trip.

Because she was both intellectually curious and social, Liz sought out a variety of opportunities to learn, build, and serve community. She proved to be a person and friend others could depend on, and her natural ability to organize and lead meant she was often asked to be in charge of something, or everything, within her friendship groups and the organizations she was part of—and she took those responsibilities seriously. Liz made weekly trips to the library and became a member of Friends of the Salinas Public Library. She joined various other groups, including the local chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and its numerous book clubs and scholarship committee, PTA at every level of her daughter’s schooling, and eventually parent booster clubs. Liz volunteered in multiple settings, including as a poll worker and as a volunteer librarian at Carole’s elementary school. She sat on the first board of the Salinas Volunteer Bureau, was a Camp Fire Girl leader for Carole’s group, and served two three-year terms on Salinas Camp Fire Girls Board of Directors. In 1968, the Hibbard family transferred their membership back to First Presbyterian Church so Carole could participate in their youth programs. Liz became an active member there, sharing her gifts and talents in support of its music program and youth group activities. She was also politically-minded and participated in social justice events. In January 1971, Liz took a position as an elementary school librarian for the Salinas Elementary School District, first at Mission Park and then at University Park, where she shared her love of reading with students. Liz and Dave also became supporters of the American Field Service Program (AFS) in Salinas, with the highlight being the 1972-73 school year, when Liz and family hosted Heather McDonald (Grant), a foreign exchange student from Australia, who is still considered part of the Hibbard family.

After Carole left for college then started working as a teacher in the San Joaquin Valley, Liz and Dave thrived as empty nesters and started traveling internationally, while also relocating Liz’s mom to a care facility in Salinas for the final years of her life. In 1981, Liz welcomed Jon Smoot, her new son-in-law, into the family with open arms, and was a constant support for them as individuals and as a couple. Soon after, Liz’s mother passed away. Liz and Dave once again became members of Northminster Presbyterian Church. Then in the fall of 1985, Dave was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. For the next four years, Liz supported Dave through two surgeries, his retirement from teaching in 1987 with her retiring in 1988, and became Dave’s primary caregiver for the final year of his life, with him passing away in October 1989 after 37 years of marriage.

It’s no surprise to those who knew her well that Liz chose to face the future with hope, joy, and resilience that she had nurtured for the first 59 years of her life. In her quest to be a lifelong learner, Liz traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Turkey, most of Europe, and various places in the United States, often as part of the Elderhostel program. She attended Gentrain classes at Monterey Peninsula College to learn more about a variety of subjects. She bought a computer and took classes at Hartnell to learn how to use it. She attended local theater productions and concerts. She stayed engaged with activities she’d always been involved with plus joined more groups and volunteered in new settings. In a 2005 Salinas Californian article, Liz was quoted as saying “I think we owe something to the world. We have a responsibility to give back to the community. There are so many who need help. There’s some way all of us can do something.” That viewpoint led Liz to serve on the Monterey County Civil Grand Jury for the term starting in 1990 and on the Salinas City Redistricting Committee in 2001 and 2002. Liz sang in the church choir, served as a deacon and an elder, and was part of multiple committees. She became a member of Active Seniors, Salinas Women’s Club, and the Monterey Peninsula Cal Alumni Association. She did various things to support the local Cancer Society and served as a mentor for the Steinbeck Center’s Young Authors Program. She became involved with the Monterey County Historical Society, volunteered as a docent for Salinas’ First Mayor’s House, and ushered for Monterey County Symphony. And through all those years, Liz was first and foremost a caring and devoted mother, mother-in-law, friend, and neighbor.

Liz moved from her home of 67 years to spend her last 3 1/2 years at Oakmont of Fresno. As the Dylan Thomas poem advises, Liz “did not go quietly into that goodnight” but instead did all she could to hang on as Alzheimer’s challenged her on every front. Her faith remained strong and continued to sustain her, even in the midst of those challenges. The blessing was that she knew Carole and Jon the entire time, knew that they and others loved her, and they knew that she loved them because she told them so on a regular basis. Her passing came suddenly the morning of July 28, 2025, with Old Pooh sitting nearby. Her family is so grateful for everything Liz was and is sure God met her at Heaven’s gates with the message, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:21)

Liz is survived by her daughter, Carole Hibbard Smoot, her son-in-law, Jon Smoot, and all those who still hold Liz in their hearts.

A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, October 18, 2025, at 11:00 A.M. at Northminster Presbyterian Church Salinas, 315 E. Alvin Dr., Salinas, CA 93906.

Liz’s Celebration of Life will be streamed live on the Northminster’s YouTube channel and Facebook page and will be posted in both places after the service. / YouTube Channel title and handle = Northminster Presbyterian - Salinas, CA or @northminsterpresbyterian-s8162 / Facebook page title = Northminster Presbyterian Church, Salinas

If you would like to make a donation in memory of Liz, please consider one of the following causes that Liz supported.

~Alzheimer’s Association = https://www.alz.org/ - Click on “Donate”

~Monterey Bay Aquarium = https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/donate

~Northminster Presbyterian Church Salinas = Venmo donations: @northminsterpresbyterian-churc, or checks mailed to Northminster Presbyterian Church Salinas, 315 E. Alvin Dr., Salinas, CA 93906

~Salinas Valley Relay for Life for Cancer Research = https://secure.acsevents.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=relay_donate_now&FR_ID=110290

~UC Berkeley School of Public Health = https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/giving