Mary Alice Smith

Mary Alice Smith, age 77, most recently of Asheville and previously of Raleigh, North Carolina died on November 2, 2024, in York, Pennsylvania. She was the wife of William Charles Smith, the mother of their four children—Susanna Joy, Matthew Brian, Elizabeth Caroline and Catherine Boehm.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1947, Mary Alice was the daughter of the late Joseph J. and Mary A. (née Morrissey) Gallagher and the oldest of nine siblings.
Mary Alice joined the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, a religious order of the Catholic Church, as part of the Band of 1964, soon after she graduated high school. While in the convent, she made several lifelong friends, and earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. Elizabeth’s University. She went on to complete a graduate degree in social work at Rutgers University while running a group home for teenage girls, some of whom she remained in touch with for decades. Mary Alice left the convent in 1971, but her vocation for service would endure for the rest of her life.
In the summer of 1972, two of Mary Alice’s friends from convent, Sr. Roseann Mazzeo and Sr. Rosemary Smith, introduced Mary Alice to an eligible bachelor—Rosemary’s brother, William “Bill” Smith. In November, 1977, with Sr. Roseann serving as Matron of Honor, the pair married. They went on to have four children, and to the end of her life, Mary Alice declared that the secret to a long marriage was to marry your best friend.
While raising a family, Mary Alice worked at a dialysis clinic, where she helped terminally ill people navigate services. During that time she also volunteered at Meals on Wheels. She brought her kids along with her while she delivered food to homebound people.
Later in life, Mary Alice pursued a teaching license and became a teacher at a public school for children with complex special needs, in Raleigh, NC. Partway through her tenure, Mary Alice stormed into her principal’s office with her resignation letter in hand. As she delivered the letter, Mary Alice advocated with ferocious eloquence against the red tape which made it more difficult to do right by her students. This scene reoccured with enough frequency during Mary Alice’s time at Bridges that her principal soon dedicated a special drawer to the stack of Mary Alice’s resignation letters. Meanwhile, Mary Alice, once she’d regained her temper, always returned to her classroom—she knew that if she quit, it was her students who would suffer for it.
Mary Alice was the glue of her family. She reigned in Trivial Pursuit. She loved detective novels, literature, Readers Digest, and Walker Texas Ranger. She had no patience for boredom. She took joy in her siblings’ good humor and quiet pleasure in artistic pursuits such as drawing and cross-stitch. She tried to instill her kids with a love of books, an appreciation for art and color, and a keen sense of responsibility for rectifying injustice.
Finally, for the last 19 years of her life, Mary bore her chronic illness, which inexorably sapped her abilities to socialize, to read, to write, to walk and to care for herself, with great fortitude and an ample Irish wit.
In addition to her husband of 47 years, she is survived by four children: Susanna J. Smith, and her husband Jon Clancy; Matthew B. Smith, and his wife Yidi, of York, Pennsylvania; Elizabeth C. Smith, and her partner, Hassan Hatam, of Wake Forest, North Carolina; and Catherine B. Smith, and her spouse, Jack Robertson.
She is also survived by four grandchildren, seven siblings (Belle Pullano, Andrew Gallagher, Joseph Gallagher, Patrick Gallagher, William Gallagher, Alice Noce, and John Gallagher), and a large extended family. She was preceded in death by a sister, Joanne Pugliese.
In accordance with Mary’s explicit instructions to “have a good old party when I kick the bucket,” a life celebration will be held from 2-4:00 PM Saturday, November 16, 2024 at Kuhner Associates Funeral Directors, Inc., 863 South George Street, York. Private burial will be in Susquehanna Memorial Gardens. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth.
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