Carol Payne Smith

Dr. Carol Payne Smith, a longtime faculty member at Western Michigan University, passed away peacefully in the presence of her family on March 18, 2025. Although she was proud of her professional accomplishments at WMU, her life and legacy are also defined by her roles as community activist, accomplished musician, and, especially, parent, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She graduated as the valedictorian of Huron (OH) High School in 1951. During college, she was the first woman to serve as President of the Student Senate at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), a rare honor in the male-dominated social environment of the early 1950s. These achievements were harbingers of a life devoted to civic engagement, leadership accomplishments, and dedication to educating others. She was a role model for her sons and grandchildren, as well as a loving mother and grandmother who supported them in their endeavors without attempting to control their choices about how they would find personal happiness and make contributions to the world.

Born as Carol Elaine Payne on March 21, 1933, in Sandusky, Ohio, she was the eldest daughter of Charles Edward Payne and Frances Hendrickson Payne. She grew up with an older brother and two younger sisters on the outskirts of Huron, Ohio. She participated in 4-H Club and entered sewing and needlepoint projects in competitions at the county fair. Despite the family’s modest circumstances, her mother made sacrifices to pay for Carol’s piano lessons. She developed a lifelong love of music. In particular, she loved classical music, sacred music, and opera. In her youth, she sang in her church’s youth choir, and she continued to participate in choirs during high school, college, and throughout adulthood at First Presbyterian Church in Kalamazoo. She became an accomplished pianist and organist who played at church services. Much later, she also learned to play the harp and was regularly asked to play at weddings and other events. She also performed in theatre productions at the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre and Farmers Alley Theatre.

At BGSU, she met her future husband, fellow student Robert (“Bob”) L. Smith. Shortly after her graduation, they married in the University’s campus chapel in September 1955. Their three sons were born between 1956 and 1963 as they moved to different locations to seek advanced education and establish their careers. When Bob accepted a job as an instructor at Hope College in 1958, they moved to Michigan where Carol taught typing and business classes at West Ottawa High School. Subsequently, the young family moved to East Lansing where both Carol and Bob enrolled in graduate school at Michigan State University. The family moved to Kalamazoo in 1965 where Carol and Bob began teaching at WMU. She completed her Ph.D. at the MSU College of Education even as she handled the lion’s share of parenting duties and household tasks. Throughout her nearly four decades as a WMU faculty member, she was known as Carol Payne Smith because she believed women should not feel required to surrender their own family identity as part of marriage. Thus, she firmly insisted on retaining her original family name—Payne—throughout the remainder of her life.

Because she personally experienced the sting of sex discrimination and had observed explicit discrimination against Black and Jewish applicants when she worked in the admissions office at BGSU, she became a tireless advocate of diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a professor of teacher education, she specialized in what was then known as “teaching the disadvantaged.” She supervised WMU students’ learning experiences in a variety of settings, including a YMCA summer camp for inner-city children from Chicago, an educational program for migrant farm worker children, and urban high schools throughout Michigan.

Carol was a member of the Racial Balance Committee that began meeting in 1968 to design a plan to desegregate the Kalamazoo Public Schools. Prior to the 1970s, discriminatory real estate practices and decisions by the board of education had perpetuated certain schools as virtually all-white institutions and simultaneously denied resources to schools that were predominantly Black. When newly elected school board members rescinded the plan before it could be implemented, Carol became one of the plaintiffs in the NAACP’s lawsuit that successfully led to a federal court order to desegregate the Kalamazoo schools in the early 1970s. During the years that the battles over racial segregation occurred, Carol went to numerous PTA and other community meetings to explain how the entire city would benefit from addressing the harms of racial segregation. Despite regularly encountering parents who screamed at her because they wanted to preserve all-white schools, she never feared or avoided confrontations. With great determination, she pursued her advocacy of equal education (and housing and employment) for all Americans.

Carol strongly supported the women’s rights movement of the 1970s and was an active supporter and participant in the National Organization for Women (NOW), the League of Women Voters, and Planned Parenthood. She participated in the 1978 Washington, D.C., march in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Ultimately, she was happy that her granddaughters did not encounter the same paternalistic treatment and barriers to professional opportunity that she experienced. However, she was keenly aware that they still faced many unfair challenges because bigotry and discrimination remain significant issues in American society. She volunteered on political campaigns and provided financial support for candidates who understood the harsh impact of discrimination and inequality.

At WMU, Carol was a dedicated teacher who guided thousands of students into teaching careers. She also periodically served in leadership roles, including chairperson of the Department of Education and Professional Development, chairperson of the Martin Luther King Day committee, and leadership positions in both the faculty senate and the faculty union. She was named “Woman of the Year” by WMU’s Commission on the Status of Women in 1982 and a Distinguished Faculty honoree by the Michigan Association of Governing Boards in 1995.

Her Christian beliefs were very important throughout her life. Within First Presbyterian Church, she served as an elder, a deacon, a trustee, and a member of every major church governance committee. Outside of the church, she followed the Biblical guidance from Micah 6:8 to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly” with God. Her faith called her to serve the needy within the community and embrace those whose religious beliefs differed from hers. She had leadership roles in organizing the church’s free medical clinic and tutoring programs. When declining health caused her to reduce her community engagement, she said she especially missed serving as a reading tutor for students at Edison Elementary School, an activity she approached with great enthusiasm for many years after retirement from WMU.

Carol enjoyed traveling and visited many countries, including China, Japan, Russia, Australia, Germany, Spain, and England. She believed that meeting and understanding people from different countries could help contribute to peace in the world. She and Bob developed special friendships with couples in England, Canada, and Russia, as well as with other Americans they met who shared their interest in visiting schools and understanding educational systems in other countries.

Although Carol was proud of her sons’ educational achievements and professional success, she was especially thrilled to become a grandmother starting in 1980. She loved holding her eight grandchildren as babies, playing with them as they grew, and later taking them to theatre performances and trips to the zoo, as well as longer trips to Canada and other parts of the United States. She sought to have a unique special relationship with each grandchild in order to understand their individual personalities and support the pursuit of their interests and goals. When she became a great-grandmother, she was less able to develop special relationships with each great-grandchild, but she was always delighted to see them. She loved to hold them, watch them grow, and hear about their development as young students in school.

Carol was keenly aware of and deeply grateful for her good fortune in life. If she had been born in an earlier era, she knew that she would not have had the opportunity to pursue advanced educational degrees and a professional career in academia. Coming from a rural household during the Depression, she never could have predicted that she would serve in leadership positions at a university and travel to countries around the world. Because of her awareness of her privileged position in society, she felt determined to help others so that they could have fair access to the necessities of life as well as opportunities to pursue their personal goals. Through her words and actions, she conveyed to her sons and grandchildren that she believed people with resources and power should work to break down barriers that create inequality rather than ignore the needs of others in order to reinforce their own wealth and privilege.

Carol Payne Smith was predeceased by Bob, her husband of nearly 61 years, in 2016. She is survived by her three sons, Jeffrey of Naples, FL, Christopher (Charlotte) of East Lansing, and Timothy (Stephanie) of Kalamazoo. She is also survived by eight grandchildren: Jennifer (Christopher) Kohler of Chicago; Katherine (Thomas) Mosley of Chicago; Karen (Peter) Lewis of Ada, MI; Megan Smith (Garrett Doherty) of Los Angeles; Alicia Smith-Tran (David Tran) of Shaker Heights, OH; Eric Smith of Detroit; and Jordan and Colin Smith of Kalamazoo. Her ten great-grandchildren, ranging in age from 13 years old to 5 months old, brought her special joy in her final years. She is also survived by one sister, Janet Hastings of Mesa, AZ, her sister-in-law, Fran Smith of Lorain, OH, a daughter-in-law, Susan Keller Smith of East Grand Rapids, and fifteen adult nieces and nephews and their many children.

A Life Story Visitation will take place on Friday, May 2, 2025, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Betzler Life Story Funeral Homes, 6080 Stadium Drive, Kalamazoo (269) 375-2900. A service to celebrate the life of Dr. Carol Payne Smith will be held on Saturday, May 3, 2025, at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 321 W. South St., Kalamazoo. Memorial contributions can be made to the WMU College of Fine Arts Dean’s Student Emergency Fund. The funds are administered by: WMU Foundation, 1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5403. Celebrate Carol’s life online by sharing your favorite stories and photos on her dedicated webpage at BetzlerLifeStory.com.