How a year in Riverhead made a lasting impact on Neil Smith

Neil Smith was a 17-year-old resident of Adelaide, Australia, when his life took a very dramatic turn. Not entirely sure of his future plans, he applied to be a Rotary exchange student in America.

“I had no great career plans,” Mr. Smith recalled as he sat in a restaurant in Riverhead last week. “My family could not afford to send me to university. We had a family friend in our church who was a Rotarian. I had no idea what it was.

“But when this idea of applying to be a Rotary exchange student came up, it gave me an adventure to look forward to,” he said.

What Mr. Smith did not know as he filled out the application was that his life would never be the same. More than a half-century after he was accepted to be a part of the Rotary exchange program, he is adamant how it impacted his life.

“It was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “It was in every way life-changing. I stayed in touch with the families I lived with, and we are still the closest of friends. We are friends for life.”

The application process was such that Mr. Smith could have gone to the Philippines or the United States. When the application came back, he learned he was going to Riverhead to spend 1967 with two families. Two others from Australia who also applied learned they would be staying with families in Center Moriches and Westhampton Beach.

Earlier this month, Mr. Smith returned to Riverhead to stay with Mary Ann Alexander, whom he met when he arrived in 1967. They were both Riverhead High School students. Mr. Smith lived with two families when he arrived — the Alexanders and the Scudders. 

Fred Alexander — who became Mary Ann’s father-in-law when, in 1970, she married his son Eric — was the owner of Tuthill Funeral home; Larry Scudder was a dentist with a practice on East Main Street. Mr. Smith stayed six months with each family and felt at home and a full member of their families and their circle of friends.

On Oct. 18 — 56 years after he first arrived in Riverhead — Mr. Smith attended the Riverhead Rotary luncheon and wowed everyone in attendance as he told his story of being in the exchange program and what it still means to him all these years later.

He spoke about the 49 letters he wrote home during that year and how his mother in Australia wrote a letter to him every week, many of them five pages long. He spoke how, once he knew which families he was staying with, Eric Alexander, the second son in that family, wrote him, saying “I have told my friends about you and they are anxious as I am to meet you.”

In January 1967, Mr. Smith’s parents drove him from Adelaide to Sydney — a journey of 1,000 miles — where he embarked on the ocean liner SS Arcadia. For three weeks, the liner crossed the Pacific, ending its journey in Vancouver. He then flew to Toronto and on to New York City.

Eric Alexander’s mother, Beverly, wrote Mr. Smith’s parents to tell them their son had arrived safely. The Alexanders were his first hosts. As well as owning the funeral home, Mr. Alexander served on the Riverhead school board. There were four boys in the family: Fred Jr.; Eric, who was a high school senior; Dean and Scott.

“Eric took me under his wing straight away,” Mr. Smith told the luncheon attendees. “He made his friends my friends, [and was] always looking out for me. It was the beginning of a friendship that would last until the day he died. It’s manifest today with my host, Mary Ann Alexander, their kids and grandkids. I’ve always felt a part of the family.”

Part of his exchange program included speaking to local organizations, such as the parents’ group at Mercy High School, 9-year-olds in the elementary school and church groups. He met other exchange students in the area and spoke to Riverhead Rotary, whose members welcomed him with open arms.

Throughout the year, friends of friends invited him to their homes for weekend barbecues. “I was welcome everywhere I went,” he said.

Six months after he arrived, Mr. Smith moved in with the Scudder family, Larry and Doris, and their three kids, Larry, Glenn and Barbara. Doris Scudder wrote a letter to Mr. Smith’s family in Australia, saying: “We consider it a privilege to have your son Neil with us.”

And there was so much more, all of which Mr. Smith has remembered and cherished to this day. A baseball game at Shea Stadium, shark fishing out of Shinnecock Inlet, a Rotary chicken barbecue and a place on the high school football team in the fall of 1967.

When Mr. Smith’s time in Riverhead ended in the late fall of 1967, “The Rotary club sent me home with a gold watch. Extraordinary generosity all through the year,” he told the luncheon attendees.

Flights from New York back to the West Coast had frequent stops, and at each one he was hosted by local Rotary clubs. From San Francisco he boarded a ship for the long passage back to Australia, arriving in Melbourne on Jan. 5, 1968 — “one year and one day after leaving Australia.”

At the end of his talk at the luncheon, Mr. Smith recited a long list of bullet points under the heading, “What did I gain from my year?” The list runs from the growth of his self-confidence, to lifetime friendships, to the many ways his stay in Riverhead improved his life and career choices after he returned home.

He concluded his talk by reading from a letter Thelma Barth, the wife of Donald Barth, who owned a prominent business in Riverhead, wrote to Mr. Smith’s parents.

“You can be proud of Neil,” she wrote. “He is indeed an asset to his family and his beloved country. Each time we had the pleasure of being with Neil we loved him more … I would love to be there when Neil arrives home …”

Seated at the Riverhead restaurant last week, Mr. Smith said one of his biggest impressions from the year “was the kindness and generosity of so many people. ‘Come over to dinner, come over, we are having a barbecue, hey, we are going into New York City, do you want to come with us?’”

In an interview, Mary Ann Alexander said her family’s friendship with Mr. Smith has been life-changing for them, too.

“Why has it lasted so long?” she said. “Whenever he was here, we were together and it was wonderful.”