Audrey Smithart Adler

Audrey Lee Smithart Adler, 74, died Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2005, at her home in Copper Center, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

At her request, no services will be held. Arrangements are with Valley Funeral Home and Crematory.

Mrs. Adler was born Oct. 12, 1931, in Portsmouth, Va., to Alton Clifford Smithart and Lucille (Craig) Brenwick.

Mrs. Adler was a civilian survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor. She married Stanley Adler on May 20, 1950, in Reno, Nev.

Mrs. Adler was a project planner for Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colo., from 1969 until her retirement in 1992. She was a member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

Before her employment, she accompanied her husband and raised her family at many U.S. Coast Guard fog and signal light stations in California, New York and Vermont.

Mrs. Adler was listed on the original Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, was an Ahtna Inc. shareholder and was associated with the Native village of Kluti-Kaah. She moved to Copper Center in 1996 to be near her mother and enjoy her extended family.

She was preceded in death by her husband in September 1979; her father in October 1987; her brother, Charles Harold Smithart, in December 2000; her mother in November 2002, and her uncle, Ahtna Traditional Chief Harry Johns Sr., in January 2004.

Mrs. Adler was accompanied in death by her dog, Pippie Marie, with whom she enjoyed an enduring symbolic relationship.

Mrs. Adler is survived by three daughters, Jeanette Williams of Copper Center, Penny Adler and Cheryl L. Lee of Colorado; two brothers, John Wesley Smithart of Nevada and Alton Clifford Smithart Jr.; sister, Gloria Cook of California; two sons-in-law, Goodwin H. Lee and Steven Sedelmeier of Colorado; uncle, Fred Ewan of Gulkana; four grandchildren, Stacy McLouth and her husband, Charles, Sondra Lee and her husband, Patrick Duffy, Zachariah Williams and his wife, Teresa, and Caitlin Lechuga and her husband, Dustin; three great-grandchildren, Celeste Williams, Lydia Duffy and Alexander McLouth; three sisters-in-law in Colorado and her many cousins in Copper Center and Gulkana.