Meet Linny Smith
She bakes and cooks. She organizes. She sews. She decorates. She paints. She arranges flowers…she loves to find ways to make you happy
By John Addyman
They say angels are a gift from above, planted here on occasion to help the rest of us feel better about being alive.
Sometimes we don’t know someone has angelic gifts until after the fact, after you’ve been “angeled,” after you recognize that a gift was provided and has graced your life.
Marilyn Stevens knows such a person.
“She is so creative in thinking of new ways to do things. She reaches out to people. She’s done many things that most of us don’t do…so many things. She loves to bring the family together. She wants her children and grandchildren to get together to share memories and make new ones. She wants her children and grandchildren to remember those kinds of things.”
The person Stevens talks about, her friend, is Linda “Linny” Smith, 74, of Rochester.
Smith is a baker and a florist…a seamstress…an artist and graphic designer…a caterer.
And in her heart, at her core, Smith is an organizer who brings people together and provide happy moments whose memories can last.
Twenty years ago, Smith missed her classmates from Eastridge High, Class of 1968. She missed them so much she started calling around to find out who might be available for a little luncheon or dinner get-together…something they could do, say, monthly.
“It was me and a couple of others — we started out with four people and it just grew,” she said, talking from her bright and very organized kitchen. “After a while, more people joined us. Over the years, some people left the group and new people joined us so that now, if everyone on my list would come, we’d have 50 people joining us.”
On her own initiative, Smith continues to contact former classmates through Facebook Messenger, through the monthly luncheon sites themselves, “or I will email them or call them. Some people don’t have email.” She pulls out handwritten pages full of names and phone numbers and email addresses. And beyond the luncheons, the group hosts two dinners a year for those who can’t make the midday get-togethers.
“I’ll go through the yearbook and think, ‘I wonder if he or she still lives in Rochester?’ Through Facebook I could search for people and find an address and call them and say ‘Hey! We’re getting together for this monthly luncheon — would you like to join us?’
“It’s so great because every time we’re together it’s like we’re back in the lunchroom, laughing and teasing one another, just like we were in school. It’s great. We had 478 in our class; we’ve lost quite a few, over 65 — I keep track of that, too.”
Smith makes the desserts for these occasions, and they’re sumptuous.
Her hosting these affairs is important.
Alvin Toffler, in his classic book, “Future Shock,” spoke about the importance of “islands” where folks could return and re-touch their past.
In her own way, Smith has built an island for her Eastridge classmates. At the Christmas holiday dinner in December at Nick’s Seabreeze Inn, the dining room was crowded, packed with broad smiles and pleasant talk from one end of the tables to the other.
Quite a few of Smith’s classmates have moved to Florida, and Smith and her husband, Dave, lived there for a while. Being so far away from Rochester didn’t stop her process. “I held a reunion down there,” she said. “One night I had 18 people sleeping in our house. Cooking their meals was great, singing the songs, swimming in the pool at midnight — it was great. I ended up doing four reunions down there.”
For the luncheons and dinners here in Rochester, she’s prepared for those who have to travel a distance to land on her island, sometimes in poor weather.
“I tell everyone who is coming that if the weather is bad, I have a spare room and ‘I’ll make you a great breakfast in the morning.’”
Like any good Italian wife, Linny Smith will make sure you’re well-fed when you come to her house.
“I’ve been cooking since I was 8 years old,” she said, “that was to help my mother because she got home from work and it was late and daddy got home early. I just started cooking. I love to cook. I love to be in the kitchen. One of the best parts of growing up was when my grandmother Fantuzzo lived with us for a few years.
“My brother Jamie was in the Marines. When he came home, being the first-born grandson, there was going to be a big party. So we started baking cookies and cookies and cookies. We filled two big packing barrels [for dishes] full of cookies.
“I said, ‘Grandmother, what are we doing?’
“She said, ‘Ah-shoo! A-watch!’ She didn’t speak any English. She had a cutting board that I have now — it means a lot to me. She’d dump out five or 10 pounds of flour and make a well in it and point to the egg and tell me to add the egg. Before you knew it, we were rolling out those cookies…I think that’s where my baking bug came from.”
For years, Smith baked for family and friends, a close circle. After some years as a department store window designer, she opened the Rose Basket Florist in the Stutson Street Plaza in the 1990s and ran it for 14 years.
“Whenever a relative was sick,” she said, “I’d make them two weeks of food and just drop it off — meatloaf, pasta, chicken, Italian wedding soup…whatever. I knew how to do that. I had a whole list of relatives, so everything was timed well because I’m a very organized person.”
Smith admits that she is the “Soup Queen.” She started bringing soup to the flower shop. People would sample it and ask, “What else do you make?”
“Whatever you like,” Smith would answer — “chicken, mashed potatoes, whatever you want, I can make it.”
And the catering service was born.
“I miss walking into the shop every day,” she said, “what a beautiful combination — the baking and the smell of fresh flowers…what else could you ask for?”
She still gets the chance to use her flower-shop skills.
“I’ll still do a wedding if someone asked me to, out of my house. I’ll do the flowers and floral arrangements. My husband has a chocolate fountain he used to have for all the weddings we did. That was very popular.”
And though she doesn’t “cater” anymore, “I have three families I cook for; it’s not a constant thing,” she explained. “One of my friends is unable to cook and his wife is no longer able to cook. She will order food and I will make it and take it up and they have food for a while. I have a friend whose son is coming in from out of town and she doesn’t really want to take the time to cook — she’d rather have the time to spend with her son and the two little kids, so I’m cooking the meals for her to serve next week. Another older lady — she’s too busy caring for her sick husband to cook.”
Then there’s the sewing
When Smith isn’t busy cooking something, she’s sewing something.
“I’ll alter anything,” she said. “I’ve made 200 dresses for Dress a Girl — dresses made for little girls in third world countries. It’s through Angels of Mercy, run by Mary Jo Culligan, a wonderful person.
“These dresses, when delivered to third-world countries, if a young lady is dressed in a dress, looks well-taken care of, she won’t get kidnapped. If she’s dressed in raggedly clothes, these people don’t think that she’s taken care of, they may kidnap her. So, by making these dresses, it helps protect them. They get together at the Irondequoit library every other week.
“Also, what Angels of Mercy does,” she explained, “let’s say a woman is trying to get back into the work field or she has gone through a major divorce or some type of abuse. Angels of Mercy gives them clothes from the shop on Winton Road. It’s a wonderful organization.”
Smith also paints. Her house is dotted with her paint, pastel and crayon creations.
“I just love painting. I’ve always been into art,” she said, holding up a snowman painting. “I wanted to be an interior designer. But you needed a four-year degree and that I didn’t have.
“I love that snowman so much I put him on my Christmas card. It just made me so happy.”
The snowman is just one more present to others that makes Linny Smith happy…one more gift.
Stevens believes that Linny Smith reaches out to people to share her gifts. “She finds ways to keep people together. In her family she has hosted quite a few get-togethers to keep people together that she’s no longer close to. Through this she’s found extended family, people she’s related to — and she made sure she contacted them and established a relationship.
“I’ve gone to a few of the Eastridge dinners,” Stevens said. “People are very happy to be together: they may not see other much except for those dinners and luncheons. People are very happy to have them as part of their everyday lives. The Class of 1968 is very close.”
Without a moment of hesitation, Linny Smith has given her classmates a gift that is extra special because everyone can share and enjoy it…the memory and companionship of old friends.