Harvey E. Smith

Harvey E. Smith passed away in Wilmington on October 20, 2023. He was born in June of 1924 in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania and grew up during the Depression. As an Army Air Corps officer and flight instructor in World War II he piloted B-17s and B-25s. He finally began training as a B-29 pilot at the time the war ended, and so was not sent overseas. He said that the B-25 was the most fun to fly, that the B-17 was easy to fly, especially when its European theater armor was stripped off and the plane flew like a kite instead of a brick, and that he wished he’d had more time to master the B-29, which he credited with ending the war. He added that he got a good education in the Air Corps including physics, meteorology, and math, and that he was always good at math. Upon resigning from the Air Corps he drove alone in a 1942 Ford from Denver to his hometown of Leraysville, Pennsylvania in six days.

Harvey married Savilla Patterson Tuttle on August 28, 1946 and they settled in nearby Towanda, where he began working for DuPont. Over the years he was promoted to increased responsibilities in sales and management of DuPont Photo Products in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois and then to Sydney, Australia, where he headed Dupont Photo Products operations for that country from 1972-1975. He then returned to work at the Dupont home office in Wilmington, and retired in 1984. During this time Harvey and Savilla managed to stay sane while raising three baby boomers who hit their teens in the late 1960s.

Harvey was an avid and competitive golfer, and was a member of the Dupont Country Club for years. He also managed several Ladies PGA tournaments, and scored his first hole-in-one in his eighties. He was preceded in death by his wife Savilla, who died in February 1998, and is survived by sons Douglas (Homewood, Illinois) and Michael (Richardson, Texas), and daughter Patricia (Brunswick, Maine), as well as his friend, Irene Wood.