By Louisa Finn, fourth generation Smiley family member
Episode #4: Passing the Baton
2021 will be forever etched in my mind, not only because of our country’s climb out of COVID, but because it is the year my mother, Patricia Smiley Guralnik, and her big brother, Lucius Gerow Smiley, died within one week of each other. Though 15 years separated them, they chose the same exit time in late January; mom in a sweet yellow room at my home at the foot of Mohonk Mountain, and Gerow aged 98 in his longtime apartment in Redlands, CA, the Smiley’s other home.