Eddie Randolph Smith Sr.

Eddie Randolph Smith Sr. of Riverhead died Jan. 23 at Peconic Bay Medical Center’s Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. He was 78 and had lived in a Riverhead nursing home for the past two years.

Born March 1, 1932, in Aurora, N.C., to James and Annie (Ebron) Smith, he attended S.W. Snowden High School. He was married in 1951 to Irene Phillips, with whom he raised 10 children. He moved to New York in 1953 after Hurricane Hazel ruined his family’s crops and livestock.

Mr. Smith was a gardener and chauffeur for the Fiske family of Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island for 21 years. He became a deacon in 1958 at Jefferson Temple Church of God in Christ in Cutchogue.

After his retirement, he moved to Brooklyn, where he worked as building superintendent for Newmark Realty in Manhattan. He was a member of Seven Gifts Pentecostal Church of God in Christ in Queens, where he was ordained in 1983.

He enjoyed making wooden railroad miniatures, watercolor painting, and gardening. His passion was reading the Bible and listening to gospel music, according to his family.

Predeceased by his first wife, and his son William, Mr. Smith is survived by his wife, Janice (née Brathwaite), of Brooklyn; six sons: Eddie Jr., Robert and Dennis, all of Greenport, Samuel and Steven, both of Cutchogue, and Phillip, of Brooklyn; four daughters: Doris, of Southold, and Vera Jackson, Carolyn and Bernice, all of Greenport; two brothers, Russell Lee Sr., of Greenport, and Cordes, of the Bronx; 32 grandchildren; 57 great-grandchildren; and three great-great-grandchildren.

Visiting hours were Jan. 28 at Horton-Mathie Funeral Home in Greenport with funeral services that day at Jefferson Temple Church of God in Christ in Cutchogue, officiated by Elder Eugene Jefferson. Interment was at Cutchogue Presbyterian Cemetery.