Bernice Smith
Bernice Dyson Smith of the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, died at Stony Brook University Medical Center on Friday, January 28.
She was born in Brooklyn on February 16, 1925, to Mable Bunn Dyson and Charles McFarland Dyson. As a young girl, she moved to the Shinnecock Reservation where she attended the one-room schoolhouse for a time before moving back to the city, where she graduated from Franklin K. Lane High School in Jamaica, Queens. In 1948, she married Charles Kellis Smith who became the tribe’s longest serving trustee—more than three decades. The two lived on the reservation where they raised seven children.
She taught her family to love one another, their people, their heritage and the Creator and all of His gifts, survivors recalled. She taught her family what it meant to be Shinnecock and to be proud of it.
While running the household and raising her children, Ms. Smith worked as a telephone operator for New York Telephone Company. She also volunteered as a Sunday School teacher and junior choir director for the Shinnecock Presbyterian Church. She had a love of working with and for people. After retiring from the telephone company, she went to work as the director of the Shinnecock Senior Nutrition Program and as a home health caregiver.
Ms. Smith loved spending time with her family. She always had some candy, good food, stories and a joke available for whoever visited. She gave the sweetest hugs and kisses, and had the most soothing and beautiful voice, the family said.
Ms. Smith was predeceased by her sister, Marion Monclova; her husband, Charles Smith; a son, Lamont Smith; and two grandsons, Damien Mckey and Darrick Smith. She is survived by sisters, Shirley Smith and Arlene Butler of Shinnecock; sons, Gerrod Smith and his wife Donna Collins-Smith, Jonathan Smith and his wife Kayla Looking Horse-Smith, and Charles K. Smith II and his wife Sherry Blakey-Smith; daughters, Denise Anderson and her husband John Anderson of Australia, Jacqueline Onco, and Mabel Cuffee and her husband Eugene Cuffee II; a godson, Rev. Michael F. Smith; a daughter-in-law, Sheila Smith; 22 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, all of the Shinnecock Reservation; and a host of relatives and friends.
Visitation was on Wednesday, February 2, at the Brockett Funeral Home in Southampton. A funeral Mass took place on Thursday, February 3, at the Shinnecock Presbyterian Church; Rev. Michael Smith officiating. Interment followed at Shinnecock Cemetery.
on Feb 8, 2011