Fred Smith, a North Riverside resident who taught at Riverside Brookfield High School for nearly 40 years, died on May 21. He was 92.
Smith worked as a sociology teacher at the high school from 1951 to 1989, when the course was a graduation requirement, said Jan Goldberg, a retired RB teacher who lives in Riverside. Goldberg described Smith as one of her mentors in RB’s humanities department, where she worked from 1976 to 2012 teaching American history and urban studies.
“The whole department was all male, and me, and all but one male was 15 to 20 years older than me,” Goldberg told the Landmark. “When I got there, Fred and another teacher, Brant Abrahamson, they were both right across the hall from me. They took me under their wing and helped me out with various things academically, discipline-wise; things that a young teacher needs help with.”
Goldberg, who worked alongside Smith for 13 years until his retirement, described him as one of the smartest men she had ever met. During their careers at RB, Smith and Abrahamson wrote their own textbooks because they didn’t like the other available options, Goldberg said.
“They wrote their own. It was six separate units, and they sold them separately to high schools and colleges all over the country,” she said. “They had dozens and dozens of sources. They came up with a six-unit textbook that was divided into little pamphlets, so the kids didn’t have to lug around this really heavy thing.”
When Smith retired in 1989 and Abrahamson followed suit shortly after, Goldberg said she maintained their legacy by teaching sociology, even after the school board removed it as a required class.
She said Smith was “a terrific writer” and “an excellent union member” and leader.
“RB, back when I started, was not a closed shop [where new employees must be union members], and the city of Chicago was very pro-union,” Goldberg said. “A very long strike happened in 1981. We had a couple of short strikes, but this was the big one: 13 school days. Fred was one of the negotiators … He and a few others got us a very good contract.”
Goldberg said Smith and Abrahamson remained friends for the rest of Smith’s life after their retirements, sharing weekly phone calls and occasional bike rides together. Goldberg said Abrahamson wished her to speak to the Landmark on his behalf about Smith, who she described as his best friend.
Dave Josefik, who became Smith’s caretaker in his old age, said he knew him even before he became Smith’s student at RB through working at his family’s auto repair shop.
“He was a good friend, and I wanted to make sure he was taken care of,” Josefik said. “He was a very, very good guy; very intelligent. He did a lot of research … the amount of books he read was unbelievable.”
Magda Villaseñor, who lived next door to Smith, said she had learned from Josefik that Smith owned about 30,000 records.
“He always spoke about music. Always,” she said. “He joked, when we first befriended one another … that he was going to purchase my home as storage and his home as the one he would live in.”
Josefik said Smith lived at home until he needed to move into a care facility after experiencing a fall while climbing the stairs.
“He had fallen, and he had a collapsed lung,” he said. “That’s what did him in, was that, and then he fell at the nursing home, and he had broken ribs. That tore him down. Each time he kept going down, he couldn’t pick himself back up at that age … It’s a shame. He was a really sweet guy.”
Josefik said a service and burial for Smith are planned to take place around the end of August or start of September at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery.
