Debra Sue Stone Smith
Birth: Sep. 10, 1954, USA
Death: Jan. 22, 2001, USA
Debbie was a waitress for the Harvest House/North House for several years after graduating from Madison High School in 1972. Debbie took her job seriously and she was an extraordinary employee. The restaurant was a noted golfers hang out and it was there she met Chris Smith who was to become her husband on November 3, 1979.
Debbie took great pride in helping her husband Chris take and pass the test required to became a PGA professional. Debbie loved being part of the golfing world and did all she could to help advance Chris’ career. She loved the travel involved in the golf profession. Though her own game wasn’t stellar, her golfing claim to fame was to drain a putt from 18 feet away on the final hole of St. Andrews, Scotland. The cheer that went up from the bystanders rivaled any ovation from the actual Bristish Open. A decade later Debbie worked side by side with Chris everyday at the Three Rivers Golf Course in Longview, Washington where she did everything from driving the concession drink cart on the course to hiring and managing all the employees in the course restaurant.
When Debbie walked into a room it was as if a thousand watt light bulb had just been switched on. She loved putting others into the spotlight with an unusual talent for making everyone feel like they were the most interesting person on the planet. She loved to “interview” people and most people would walk away from a conversation with Debbie wondering how she had elicited so much information from them.
Debbie was sincere in her interest of others. She often said she thought she should have been a talk show host… but no one on earth was as interesting to Debbie as her own daughter, Amanda Chelsea Smith, born ten years after Chris and Debbie were married. Debbie was ecstatic to become a Mother and took Amanda everywhere; to the all the same events, golf tournaments and restaurants she had gone to before she had Amanda.
Over three hundred people attended Debbie’s funeral after Debbie died unexpectedly after surgery. No one who knew Debbie will ever forget her signature laugh, her endless curiousity, her deep love of friends and family, her fantastic nutcracker collection, her holiday hostessing and her boundless effervescent joie de vivre.
Debbie, the quintessential daughter-sister-wife -partner-Mother-friend, hers was a light that can never be extinguished.
