Bob Smart (1931-2026)

Freedom—July 17, 2026—Friends and family gathered last week in Freedom to celebrate the life of Bob Smart. Bob died peacefully at home on May 6. He was 95.

A celebrated local volunteer, he was at various times President and Historian of the Freedom church, Program Director and President of the Community Club, and a founder of the Freedom Heritage Committee.

Bob was my neighbor on North Broad Bay. He and his wife, Ruth, retired there in 1998, coming from Connecticut, where they lived near Candlewood Lake.

When we started Ossipee Lake Alliance, Bob took an interest. He was filled with ideas.

Candlewood Lake, where Bob and Ruth kept a boat, is man-made, and Bob knew the ins and outs of its dam. That made him curious about the dam that keeps Ossipee Lake viable.

His eventual multi-part story on the history and importance of the Ossipee River Dam was one of our first articles.

Bob and Ruth were full-time lake residents at a time when a majority of lake homes were still seasonal. Come spring, Bob would have stories for us part-timers.

Those stories became the “Smart Report.” In personal observations from his perch on the bay, he reported on the first snowfall, the cracking noises that lake ice makes on frigid nights, and the travails of negotiating spring’s frost heaves.

“The lake has been at its normal winter low since the flood of December went down the river,” he wrote in his first column, setting up a folksy style that would characterize his writing for the next 18 years.

As people took to his writing, he wrote more often. He wrote about putting his docks in the water and taking them out. The smell of pine needles while raking them on a warm October day. An excursion to Bobby Sue’s for ice cream.

For those who love the lake, he made the familiar seem new, and the mundane seem special.

Bob wrote less frequently as his eyesight declined, and even less so after Ruth died. After reporting Ice-Out, on April 13, 2023, he retired his column.

The lake remains a special place. But it’s a different place than it was when Bob and Ruth picked Broad Bay for their home 28 years ago. His “Smart Reports” are still  around to remind us of what the lake was like during their time here.