Madelyn Morehouse Smith Thomas 1922-2012

MOREHOUSE SMITH THOMAS

Posted By: Connie Swearingen-Volunteer (email)
Date: 11/28/2012 at 18:15:36

Sioux City Journal
November 25, 2012

SLOAN, Iowa | Madelyn Morehouse Smith Thomas, formerly of Sloan, died peacefully Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, at Anna Kaseman Hospice in Albuquerque, N.M. She celebrated her 90th birthday in May.

A private cremation has been conducted by Direct Funeral Services in Albuquerque. Interment in Santa Fe National Cemetery will follow on a date to be determined. The date, time and location of a memorial gathering will be announced soon.

Madelyn was born May 11, 1922, in Sloan, Iowa, a small farming community near the Missouri River. She was the only daughter of Iva and Lester Morehouse, and she graduated from Sloan High School in 1940. Her younger brother Jackie L. Morehouse died in Albuquerque in 1951.

After high school, Madelyn went to Washington, D.C. and a “war job” at the FBI, where she met and married James Milnor Smith, who had grown up in New Orleans and who was serving in the FBI’s identification division. After war service overseas, Jimmie re-joined the FBI, this time as a Special Agent, and in 1950 he and Madelyn brought their young and growing family to Albuquerque. New Mexico became her home for the next 62 years.

While raising four children, Madelyn found time and enthusiasm for square dancing, sewing, crafts, and art of an amazing variety. Jimmie died in 1972. But fate had a surprise in store for Madelyn, several years after Jimmie’s death, she received a telephone call from Donald C. Thomas, who’d been her high school sweetheart back in Iowa. They met again, then married, and Madelyn’s life took a new turn. She learned to play golf, they traveled, she found new outlets for her creative energies, including hand-made greeting cards and fabric arts, and she learned how much fun it was to raise box turtles in her back yard. Don died in 1990, as he and Madelyn were returning home to Albuquerque after attending their 50th high school class reunion in Sloan.

Madelyn’s life was rich and full, she had two good marriages and a wealth of dear, true friends. Among those were her children’s friends, to whom she extended warm and generous welcomes into her home, her life, and her heart. She found fulfillment and self-expression in her arts and crafts. She saw her children and their children grow up happy and kind, nurtured by the values she taught them every day of her long life. She has been greatly loved, and she will be greatly missed, by all of us whose lives she touched. Good night, Mom. See you in the morning.

She is survived by her son, Rick and his wife Layne, of Santa Fe; daughter, Judy and her husband James of El Paso; son, Ken and his wife Nancy of Las Cruces; son, David and his wife Laurel of Albuquerque; and by an extended but close family of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and two great-great-granddaughters.

In place of flowers, the family suggests that donations be made to Anna Kaseman Hospice Services In-Patient Unit, 8300 Constitution Avenue NE, Albuquerque, NM 87110.