Obituary of John Smylie

Dr. John Edwin Smylie "Jack" Dr. John E. Smylie, former President of Queens University, 1967 to 1974, and CEO of Smylie Educational Enterprises, died Thursday, June 13, 2013 at The Cypress of Charlotte. He was 85. During his tenure at Queens, one of Dr. Smylie's proudest achievements was to give the first honorary doctorate awarded an African American woman in the school's history to Elizabeth Koontz in 1974. He also raised the college's academic standards, increasing the number of faculty Ph. D.'s from 30% to 60%. Before coming to Queens, he was an associate professor and chaplain at Occidental College, Los Angeles, 1962 to 1967, where he helped design the prize-winning Herrick Chapel. While at Occidental, Dr. Smylie invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the campus. In a private conversation King said "we need more progressively minded thinkers in the south" and encouraged Dr. Smylie to accept the position at Queens. These words solidified Dr. Smylie's decision to come to Charlotte. After leaving academia, he founded Smylie Educational Enterprises to provide educational tools to enhance learning at secondary schools and colleges throughout North and South Carolina Dr. Smylie was born March 11, 1928 in Memphis, TN to Theodore Shaw Smylie and Mildred Margaret Hutchinson Smylie. He grew up in St. Louis, graduating from Washington University with a B.A. in 1949. He was ordained into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in 1952 and earned his Ph.D. in American Religious History from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1959. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Cornelia Claxton Smylie and his three children; daughter Lydia Bianchi and husband Paul Bianchi of Franklin, TN, and their children Samantha, Calli and Matthew; sons Jonathan Smylie and wife Amy Lyon of Wilmington, N.C., and David Smylie of the Bahamas. Services will be private. To honor his belief that we should all be good Samaritans his family respectfully requests memorials in Jack's memory be made to the local charity of your choice. His family wishes to thank the staff of the Stewart Health Center for their skillful and loving care during the last year of his life.