Lois Smith Carter

Lois Smith Carter died June 22 in Edmonds, Wash., at the age of 83.

She was born in Riverhead on April 16, 1928, to Reginald C. and Doris R. Smith. She graduated from Barnard College after a junior year abroad at the University of Geneva. In 1949, she married Robert E. Richard and moved to Washington, D.C., where he completed medical school.

The family moved to Prosser, Wash., in 1954, where Dr. Richard practiced medicine until his death in 1959. Ms. Carter and her three children then moved to Ellensburg, Wash., where she taught high school French.
In 1963 she lived in Paris with her children and studied French at the Sorbonne. She married Donald N. Carter of Prosser in 1967, and they moved to Seattle, where he was a reporter and editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Ms. Carter worked for the IRS as a taxpayer services specialist until her retirement in 1993.

According to family members, she was an avid reader of history and had great intellectual curiosity, a passion for beauty and a love of painting and sculpture, which she nourished by visiting most of the great art museums of the world, often with small children in tow. She was a season ticket holder to the Seattle Opera and made an annual trek to Ashland, Ore., for the Shakespeare Festival.

Family also said she enjoyed the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and went camping every year with her husband and other family members on the slopes of Mt. Adams, where she would pick wild huckleberries.

Predeceased by her first and second husbands, Ms. Carter is survived by her children, Charles Carter of Tacoma, Wash., Paul Richard of New York, N.Y., Edwin Richard of Belmont, Mass., and Lucy Richard of Edmonds, Wash.; her siblings, Priscilla Schecter of St. James, N.Y., and Allen Smith of Aquebogue; and seven grandchildren.

A memorial service will take place in late July. Donations may be made to Planned Parenthood or Northwest Harvest.