"Ma" Smalley Dies

Mrs. Mary Smalley, known affectionately as "Ma" Smalley to the hundreds of Dartmouth men who took their meals at the Smalley Club" or otherwise came under her mothering wing, died June 7 in Fairview Hospital, Great Barrington, Mass., at the age of 85.

The Smalley Club was operated for thirty years until it closed in 1944, and for most of that period it was located at 5 College Street. With good food, and plenty of it, went "Ma" Smalley's pungent personality, and she was the delight and dependable friend of her boys, especially those who worked at the club to earn their meals.

A tribute in the Hanover Gazette last month rightly claimed that her death closed a Dartmouth era. "She was a man's woman and most especially a Dartmouth man's, and for hundreds of Dartmouth men around the earth her famous eating club at 5 College Street remains an ever-green memory. Here, for thirty years, she mothered, bossed, loved, robustly fed, and licked into shape generations of students and young faculty members, and none of them can forget her. In the May 1954 issue of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE Professor John Hurd ('21) recorded for all Dartmouth men his memory of the extraordinary, colorful Irish Yankeewoman whom nobody ever called anything but 'Ma' and who, to the end of her long days, kept the wit and quick tongue of her youth, and the warm affection of 'her boys'."

Funeral services were held June 10 in St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Hanover, and burial was in the old Dartmouth Cemetery. Mrs. Smalley leaves two sons, Richard Smalley of Great Barrington and William Smalley of Hanover; a brother, William Donnelly of Bridgeport, Conn.; a sister, Mrs. J. J. Reed of New York City; two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

In memory of "Ma" Smalley, a group of Dartmouth men have made a cash gift to the College.