Former Relief Society General President Barbara B. Smith passes away

SALT LAKE CITY — Former LDS Relief Society General President Barbara Bradshaw Smith died Monday after a life in which she met with kings and queens and talked to U.S. presidents and was a strong voice on women's issues.

Family members described Sister Smith, 88, who served as the 10th Relief Society general president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from October 1974 to April 1984, as a beacon of light who stayed involved in community and LDS Church activities even after becoming ill with pulmonary fibrosis in recent years.

She passed away Monday at 10:05 p.m., surrounded by her seven children and their loving families.

"If anybody was ready to go, she was," her brother Thomas R. Bradshaw told the Deseret News on Monday night. "She had done so much for so many people and traveled the world, as well."

It was a reunion for family members who joined together Monday night, huddled around the woman who gave so much to others.

"To her dying breath, she was concerned about other people and how they could be helped and lifted and blessed in their life," said Smith's daughter, Lillian Kaye Alldredge.

Born in Salt Lake City on Jan. 26, 1922, to Daniel Delos and Dorothy Helen Mills Bradshaw, Sister Smith attended South High School and held offices in student government. Sister Smith married Douglas H. Smith in the Salt Lake Temple on June 16, 1941, and they had seven children together. He was later called as a member of the Quorum of the Seventy. Douglas Smith died in 2009.

She was called to be Relief Society General President on Oct. 3, 1974, by LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball and became the first general president born in the 20th century.

"She was just an exemplary woman in every aspect," said Lowell Virgil Smith, one of Sister Smith's sons. He recalled that when she was set apart as the Relief Society president, President Kimball said she would be a light and inspiration to the women of the world.

And she was.

In a June 1975 Ensign Magazine article, Sister Smith recalled her first experience with Relief Society on March 17, 1942, during an anniversary program.

"I was expecting our first baby momentarily," she said, "and my mother didn't want to leave me alone. That day at Relief Society, the hundred years of Relief Society history were reviewed, a meaningful way for me to see what Relief Society was all about and how I could fit into it. I started to attend our ward Relief Society regularly soon after that."