Nancy Elizabeth Miller Smith was born May 23, 1926, in Martins Mill, Texas, to Ruby Opal McWilliams and Martin Marion Miller. Elizabeth was the oldest of five children: Patsy Ruth, Jack Martin, Mary June, and Peggy Sue, all of whom except Mary predeceased Elizabeth. At the early age of five, Elizabeth demonstrated one of her foundational characteristics of being responsible when her mother would send her to the store with a little change to buy milk for the household. She grew up in Longview, Texas and was always a good student in school.
Elizabeth very much enjoyed the movies that were made then, carefully saving up her change to go to the theater. She was one of the first in the family to go to college. In order to pay for it, Elizabeth worked in a bank for a year before attending North Texas University where she received her degree in Library Science with an Education minor.
Elizabeth worked for a while at a school in New Mexico. She married John Burns Smith on July 6, 1951. He was in the Army, and she travelled by herself to meet him in Anchorage, Alaska where they spent the first couple of years of married life. When he got out of the army, they lived in Lubbock, Texas; Corpus Christi, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Dallas, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Hartford, Connecticut; and moved to Kerrville, Texas in 1994. Elizabeth made all these moves for the sake of Burns’s jobs, and never complained about being uprooted, or all of the packing and unpacking.
Elizabeth and Burns had three children: Diane, Pam, and Burns Jr. When the children were young, she sewed their clothes, and she made the curtains herself for most of the early houses they owned. She remained at home to raise the children, volunteering as a Cub Scout Den Mother and a Blue Birds Leader. After the children were grown, Elizabeth worked as a bank secretary. She was always an avid reader, enjoyed crossword puzzles, and loved playing bridge. She was very independent so had no difficulty keeping herself occupied when she went on international business trips with Burns. They were married for 56 years until 2008, when Burns passed on from lymphoma-leukemia.
She moved to Huntsville in 2019 to be closer to her daughter and son-in-law. Elizabeth was accepting of these changes as she had always been, moving into Assisted Living before spending the last three years of her life in Redstone Skilled Nursing before passing on October 8, 2026, at the age of 100.
Elizabeth is survived by children, Diane Smith Zimmerman and husband, Arthur B. (Huntsville, AL), Pamela Smith Cook and husband, William Michael, (Jacksons Gap, AL), and J. Burns Smith Jr. (Madison, MS); her sister, Mary Long (Houston); 11 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren with one more on the way
Visitation will be from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. Saturday, October 17, 2026, at Laughlin Service Funeral Home. The funeral service will follow at 11:00 a.m. in the funeral home chapel. Burial will be in Maple Hill Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. (https://www.stjude.org)
