In Memory

Mark Smith

Mark Smith

 Mark Smith was returning to college in Corvallis after spring break in 1963. A fellow school mate was giving him a ride in his Corvair. In those days you had to go on Hwy 99 (there was no 5 yet) and it was two lane a lot of the way. A semi truck veered over the center line and crushed the Corvair. The Corvair driver was dead at the crash but Mark lived on with severe head injuries. The doctors kept saying he could wake up at any moment. Mark finally succumbed in early summer.

 

In November of 1969 Mark’s brother, Dan (Class of ’64), was killed in Vietnam.



 
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04/23/12 03:45 PM #1    

Roger Spencer

I believe Mark was the first one of us to cross the great devide while returning home on a college break.  Who knows where the future may have pointed my friend had he not left us.

             Something to think about,          Roger Spencer


04/08/14 07:59 PM #2    

Allyson Young (Johnson)

Mark died in the spring of 1963 in an automobile accident  - as I recall his little sports car was knocked off the road by a truck as he was returning from Spring vacation in Los Altos on his way back to school in Oregon.  Janet Leslie Hibbs came to tell me about it as we shared a dorm at college.  He was part of the group of friends who were led into square dancing and folk dancing  by Pete Duveneck - we twirled in the study hall on Grad NIght while others were cheek to cheek in the cafeteria.  I invited Mark to the Twirp Dance in our senior year and he graciously accepted while letting me know politely that he had a girl friend at another school.  I'll never know whether this was true or a polite way to fend off my interest :-)  Still we had a good time and I cried at his funeral, the first for a person my own age.


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