Adapted, in part, from Wayne’s Memorial program
After a sudden, catastrophic pneumonia resulting in cardiac arrest, Wayne Smith, PhD, died April 29, 2019.
Born in 1950 in Philadelphia, Wayne’s childhood was spent in a neighborhood of tidy houses clustered around a wood, where he was allowed to roam. Wayne was happiest when on the move—football, lacrosse, rowing, hiking, dancing, biking, sailing, road trips. He liked being outside, he liked seeing new sights. He rambled the hills outside Wenatchee daily with his dog, Greta, always looking for new pathways.
The only child of two hard-working parents, Bud and Ruth, Wayne was also hard-working, learning the piano well enough to perform Rachmaninoff at high school graduation, where he graduated top of his class. The pride of the family, the first to go to college, Wayne attended Princeton, and later earned a PhD from Washington University. In his sophomore year, Wayne hitchhiked across country to watch a friend in the Olympic try-outs in Eugene, Oregon, and he fell in love with the west and never left.
Wayne was a wise and masterful teacher, clinician and researcher whose career in our department spanned over four decades. He started as a clinical psychology intern and subsequently participated in clinical research in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). He played a major role for many years in both clinical supervision and care at Harborview’s DBT program. His expertise in DBT paired with his research skills made him a valued research and clinical consultant to many interdisciplinary projects within our Department as well as other Medical School departments that valued his expertise.
Wayne’s contributions to our Department’s capacity to implement exemplary clinical care to individuals whose mental health challenges ranged from those with severe depression to individuals who experience significant substance use to adolescents and their families who have been ensnared in the juvenile justice system. He championed the use of empirically supported cognitively behavioral treatments for both adults and adolescents. During the last ten years of his career, Wayne was the lead training coordinator for the Family Integrated Transitions (FIT) program in the Division of Public Behavioral Health and Justice Policy. His contributions to training and program development were essential to this program achieving national recognition for improving the lives of youth with serious psychiatric disorders involved in the juvenile justice system.
Wayne had hardship, of course, but he saw himself as having a wonderful life. He remarked on this many times. He called himself lucky. And he was. But he was also good—he made the effort to be kind, to be generous, to do the right thing. Wayne wore many hats, athlete, psychologist, helper, seeker, musician. Great friend to his buddies, good son to his parents, and devoted stepdad, granddad and husband to wife Patricia. Wayne had a sweet heart and a knack for not taking himself too seriously, though everyone knew he was a seriously good man.
