Alice Marie Franke Smith

Born to Emily Marie Cuiffreda Franke and Herman Franke at Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington D.C. on the 30th day in August 1939, Alice Marie Franke spent her childhood years growing up in a brick home on Peabody St. in Northeast Washington that was built by her uncle John Arban. Alice Marie was an only child but never felt that way because she was surrounded by a large close knit extended family of first and second generation American’s that lived in the D.C. area. She viewed her many cousins as brothers and sisters, so much so that her three children would be raised unaware that their cousins, aunts, and uncles on their mother’s side were actually once removed. She was proud of her family roots and in the 1990s established contact with her mother’s family in Monte San Angelo, Italy and father’s family in Herstella, Germany visiting them both and hosting them when they came to the US. She maintained regular contact with her European relatives via phone and email over the next 20 years and cherished the friendship, heritage, and sense of family they brought to our lives.

Alice Marie went to high school at the Academy of the Holly Names in Silver Spring, Maryland where she made many lifelong friends. Her classmates continue to meet for lunch once a month and she always looked forward to afternoons telling stories and remembering the times they had shared together. While in school she was involved in many activities including Choir, basketball, swimming, drill team, and the prom committee. She loved the piano and began teaching others in 1957 during her senior year which she continued until 1972. Alice loved to dance and always spoke fondly of the dance parties of the 1950s whether they were at one of the local schools, Fletchers Boat House, Glenn Echo Park, or one of the local churches. In the 11th grade her high school began offering business classes. Initially she took them to avoid Latin but ultimately they provided her with skills that got her recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency immediately following graduation.

She moved into her first apartment across from the Pentagon in Arlington in 1959 and in the years following high school was recognized in several local beauty contests, water skied in a TV commercial for a yacht club near North Beach where she spent much of her time as a teenager, and ran a furniture store over her father’s gas station on Jefferson Davis Highway in Crystal City when she wasn’t working. While briefly married in the early sixties she adopted her son Keith. Among her many jobs as a secretary at CIA the one she enjoyed most was working for General McFarland where she often typed and many times delivered the White House Daily Brief. In January of 1965 she met the brother of her neighbor, Ernest Smith, who was a soldier stationed at nearby Fort Belvoir and turned out to be the love of her life. Alice and Ernie married a year later at a Church on Georgia Avenue.

She worked at CIA until her second son David was born in 1968. A year after moving into their home in Vienna in 1971, Alice Marie had a baby girl she named Dawn Marie—the name she gave her dolls as a child. Alice Marie was a wonderful mother that was ever present for her three children attending all of their activities. She served the community as PTA President, President of her neighborhood civic association in Stonewall Manor, and as a representative on the Fairfax Zoning Board. She enjoyed the company of her friends and neighbors and thrived on having the children and their friends around the house. She returned to work at CIA as a contractor for seven years until Ernie retired in 1993. In later years, she enjoyed traveling—particularly to Maine—and was blessed by two wonderful grandchildren that she loved dearly—Zachary and Nathan. During her life she cherished her time with friends and family. Her presence will forever be missed at family gatherings—the thing she loved most of all.

Arrangements under the direction of National Funeral Home, Falls Church, VA.