Teacher Douglas Smart molded citizens, leaders

Great teachers yearn to make lasting impressions on their students. Douglas Smart, who taught history to Seattle high-school students and citizenship classes to immigrants, leaves behind scores who have carried his lessons well beyond the classroom.

"He motivated students to think beyond themselves to what's important in society," said Camden Hall, a Seattle attorney who was a student of Mr. Smart's at Ballard High School. "He was a teacher in the finest sense of the term."

Mr. Smart died Dec. 9 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 86.

His eldest of four children, Georgia Smart, recalled appreciative comments from high-school students who signed Mr. Smart's yearbooks: You are the best teacher I've ever had. If it wasn't for you, I would have dropped out of high school. Because of you, I'm going on to college and majoring in history.

Mr. Smart began working as a teacher in the Seattle School District in 1953, focusing on contemporary issues and Far Eastern history. He taught at Ballard through 1962 and ended his teaching career in 1978 as head of Nathan Hale's history department.

"He remained a good friend to a lot of his students after they graduated, including me," said Hall, Ballard's student-body president in 1958, the same year Mr. Smart was senior-class adviser. "The relationships meant a lot to him, and I know they meant a lot to his students."

While teaching high school, Mr. Smart also taught citizenship classes in the evening at Seattle Central Community College.

"It was a natural way for him to impart his interest in government and the Constitution to a group of people extraordinarily willing to soak it all up," Georgia Smart said. "His citizenship students were so grateful to Dad, it was as if he was the one responsible for them becoming citizens. It was very rewarding for him."

Mr. Smart, whose parents immigrated from Scotland, never forgot the kindness of a group of women affiliated with the Deaconess Settlement, a Rainier Valley outpost of the United Methodist Church.

"My dad constantly spoke of how much they helped his family while he was a youth and provided inspirational help," Georgia Smart said.

After graduating in 1935 from Franklin High, Mr. Smart served in the U.S. Navy as a radio operator. During the years preceding World War II, he worked for the Federal Communications Commission in Portland, where he monitored radio transmissions for subversive messages. From 1943 to the end of the war, he was an officer in the U.S. Merchant Marine.

After the war, Mr. Smart met Kay Sanders, the best friend of a friend's wife. Mr. Smart proposed to her in summer 1947, and the couple married in Seattle later that year. The Smarts raised their family in Ballard.

Mr. Smart had begun studying constitutional law at the University of Washington but his mother and his new wife could see that his destiny was not in the courtroom but rather the classroom. He changed course and pursued teaching, receiving a master's in history from the UW in 1952.

Tom Alberg, Ballard's senior-class president in 1958, remembers Mr. Smart as an adviser to student government.

"It was during that time that I really learned the skills of running a meeting, which has lasted me a lifetime," said Alberg, managing director of the Madrona Venture Fund, an investment fund, in Seattle. "He helped develop many of us into leaders."

As seriously as Mr. Smart took his work, he also had a wonderful sense of humor, Georgia Smart said. He would devise silly names for things and people. He called his daughter Georgia "Jersey Jars," "Jay Bones" and "Jabes." He came up with the name "Clyde C. Clutchplate" to describe anyone who might be a little goofy.

After leaving the classroom, Mr. Smart followed his passion for remodeling old houses and became a real-estate agent until retiring in the early 1990s. Mr. Smart was thrilled to have played rounds of golf in Scotland at both St. Andrews and Turnberry, two of the world's finest courses.

"He was an extremely devoted husband, father and grandfather, so loving, so conscientious and so proud of all of his children," Georgia Smart said. "He instilled in all of us a very strong work ethic. I always admired him for how much integrity he had."

Mr. Smart is survived by his wife of 55 years, Kay, of Seattle; two daughters, Georgia, of Seattle, and Jean Gilliland, of Encino, Calif.; two sons, Doug, of North Bend, and John, of Seattle; and two sisters, Dorothy Revelle, of Denver, and Catherine Pidduck, of Eastern Washington; and five grandchildren.

Services are scheduled at 3 p.m. Jan. 10 at University Unitarian Church, 6556 35th Ave. N.E. The family requests memorials to the Franklin High School Class of 1935 Scholarship Fund or the general scholarship funds at Ballard or Nathan Hale high schools.

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com