Nan Cornelia Smith

Nan Smith was born in Albany, New York on December 6th, 1928 to Thomas and Martha Ellefson. She was their only child. Her father, Thomas Ellefson, emigrated to the U.S. from Norway when he was seventeen. Her mother, whose maiden name was Zander, came from a family of German immigrants. She lived with her parents at 149 3rd Ave, Rensselaer, NY, in a small house that still stands today, attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 1945 to 1949, in one of the first classes that admitted women. She finished her senior year at UCLA in 1950, graduating with a degree in Chemistry.

In June 1949 she married Halton Christian Arp and moved to Southern California. Her husband, called Chip, received his Ph.D. in astronomy from Caltech, and then took at a research position at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena. Her daughter Kristana Arp was born two years later and in 1954 her daughter Alissa Arp was added to the family. During this period Nan moved with her young family to a number of places, among them Capetown, South Africa and Bloomington, Indiana. They even lived next to the telescope at the top of Mount Wilson for awhile. Nan and Chip divorced in 1960.

In March of 1963 Nan married Donald Webb Smith. Soon after, she, Don and her daughters moved to La Habra, California, where after some years her third child Elizabeth Nan Smith was born. There Nan worked as a high school math teacher and then began a career in the aerospace industry at Aerojet , which subsequently became Rockwell International. She was one of the first computer programmers, back when cardboard punch cards were still used, working on the Minute Man missile program, then later on the Space Shuttle. Her husband Don was a chemist at Aerojet and eventually became a high school chemistry teacher. At the time Nan began at Rockwell, she and Don moved to Placentia and remained there until the time they retired.

Nan retired in 1991, and moved with Don to the Point Loma neighborhood in San Diego. There Nan devoted a great deal of energy to a hobby she loved, building scale model dollhouses. She also worked as a volunteer at the American Cancer Society Discovery Shop in Point Loma and played bridge regularly.

In May 2011 Nan and Don bought a house in Seattle, Washington, so they could be closer to their daughter Elizabeth and Elizabeth's daughter Isabelle. She continued to work on her dollhouses and play bridge until quite recently. She died at home on November 6th, 2013.

She is deeply missed by her husband Don, and lovingly remembered by her daughters Alissa, Kristana, and Elizabeth (husband Steven), as well as by her friends and other family members.