Anna Smith

Anna Smith (July 31, 1933 - December 17, 2024) was the eldest daughter of Phillip, an Italian immigrant, and Assunta, a first-generation Italian-American, Eramo. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, the Eramo family moved to Linda Vista, California - a quiet suburb overlooking Mission Bay and a growing Mission Valley. Here, Anna’s childhood unfolded against the backdrop of the small military town of San Diego during World War 2. As a young woman, she attended San Diego City College where she joined Phi Beta Xi sorority while she earned a general clerical certification.

It was during her career as a secretary for CalTrans that Anna met her husband, James Robert “Bobby” Smith. A decade older than her and divorced, Anna’s parents intervened, sending her to Ohio to stay with family for a year (all while she still made monthly payments on her brand new Chevy, she’d want you to know) in the hope distance and time would cool their ardor. Upon her return, Bobby and Anna wed in a civil ceremony at San Diego City Hall in 1957, and promptly moved to Sacramento, California where CalTrans was headquartered.

In November 1959 they welcomed their only daughter, Susan “Sue” Denise Smith. An avid outdoorsman, hunter, and fisherman, Bobby tragically lost his life in 1961 while on a fishing trip. Thirty, widowed, and managing single motherhood, Anna moved back to San Diego in 1963, purchasing a home ten miles from where she grew up in La Mesa. It was in this two-story split level that she made a home. A modern, albeit forced, woman, Anna raised Sue, enrolling her in Our Lady of Grace Catholic School, leading her Girl Scout troop, and doing her best in a life she never could have imagined for herself.

Returning to work, Anna was a secretary for Jay B. Mills insurance broker and then for the state law office until she retired; relationships she maintained through monthly lunches. Until it closed, the Chinese restaurant on Mission Gorge Road was her favorite place to meet with “her judges” (she also very much enjoyed the plum wine they served by the glass).

Anna was a lifelong member of her college sorority and post collegiate professional sorority, Alpha Iota, where she met her best friend, Colette Sweeny. Collete was boisterous with an infectious, cackly laugh, fire-red hair, and she knew exactly how to push Anna’s buttons to chill Anna out - a challenge for a woman who had already survived so much. Together, Anna and Collette traveled the world, checking off bucket list destinations like the Great Wall of China and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. They were an unstoppable duo, destined to laugh through their golden years until Collette’s untimely passing in 1996. This would be Anna’s second great heartbreak, continuing to shape the contours of her outlook on life, relationships, fairness, and safety.

We’ll never know for sure (and this writer may be slightly biased), but of all the roles Anna had in life, being Grandma was her favorite. There was nothing off the table for Taylor or Amanda (except Barbie’s, their bodies being “too busty” according to Anna). Many events included private mini pony rides and petting zoos, trips to the mall meant Dip-n-Dots and carousel rides, and birthdays and Christmas were celebrated with oodles of gifts. The granddaughters lived like princesses under Queen Anna’s reign, spoiled rotten and loved deeply. Amidst the overabundance of materialism, it is the quieter, transient moments the girls remember fondest of their grandmother: listening to Phantom of the Opera for the first time (on cassette) in Grandma’s Mercedes (pronounced Mur-sid-ez), or the evening ending refrain, “How much does Grandma love you?” she would ask as tiny arms reached as wide as they could while exclaiming, “Thiiiiiis much!” before being enveloped in a hug that smelled of White Shoulders (Anna’s signature scent) and peppered with wet lipstick kisses.

Anna maintained a full social calendar in retirement. She was a regular volunteer “holding babies” at Grossmont Hospital for 50 years, and a familiar face at ICF functions hosted through her church. At 70, she walked the 9th annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon, placing third in her age group. In the last decades of her life, Anna found companionship with her neighbor, Dr. Robert Thomas. Together, they traveled back east, road-tripping several times to visit his family, enjoying each other’s company as they explored middle America (and every Cracker Barrell or Bass Pro Shop along the way).

A fall in December 2022 broke Anna’s femur and began the descent to the end of her life. Scared in a world she no longer recognized, angry for the ways her body and mind were not cooperating, Anna’s wilfulness, which won her a husband so many years ago, carried her through two more years until her Lord called her home the seventeenth of December. Her family hopes the embrace of the love of her life, their first in over 60 years, was sweet and tender, and that seeing her dear friend, her parents, and her brother brought her stillness and tranquility, ways of being she sought desperately in life.

Anna is survived by her only daughter, Sue Hori, her son-in-law, Steve Hori, and her granddaughters, Taylor and Amanda Hori. She is remembered by her companion, Dr. Robert Thomas, the members of Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, her work friends, and sorority sisters. Anna will be interred next to her husband at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in a private, family-only, ceremony. In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation be made to a charity devoutly supported by Anna, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.