Ludlow Bixby Smethurst

                                                    March 13th, 1931 to June 8th, 2026

Ludlow (Bix) Bixby Smethurst died peacefully among family June 8th, 2026 at her home in Sleepy Hollow, New York. She was 95 years old and had lived a full and active life. Bix was foremost an artist. She said about herself that art was not a hobby but how she processed the world. Along with art, family, immediate and extended, was most important to her. But she was also a homemaker, excellent cook, all-around discerning food enthusiast, a quiet activist supporting many environmental and humanitarian causes, and active in whatever community she found herself.

Bix was born and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota with her parents, Mary (Fahnestock) and Willard, and her older brother Willard. She attended Linwood Elementary School and Central High School, where she made life-long friends with whom she kept in touch and visited annually throughout her life.

Like her mother and great grandmother, she headed east after high school to attend Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She remained an active alumna and supporter of the college, an experience and dedication that helped to inspire her own daughter and a granddaughter to attend. Although she majored in Sociology with the thought of being a social worker, she pursued an interest in painting that would play a central role in her future. Another consequential outcome of her college experience was her meeting Edward William (Bill) Smethurst, who attended nearby Amherst College. They married the month after her graduation, and Bill himself would later become a Mount Holyoke trustee.

In the decade after their marriage, Bix and Bill moved many times (Key West, FL, Newport, RI, Paulsboro, NJ, Bloomfield, NJ, Cambridge, MA, Montclair, NJ, and Columbus, IN, following Bill’s service in the Navy, time in graduate school, and career moves. In 1964 they relocated to Ridgewood, NJ, where they would spend the next fifty years. Along the way, they raised three children and familied six dogs: Winnie, Blackie, Boswell, Augustus, Rumpole, and Missy.

Bix was a quintessential “lake girl.”  As a child and young woman, she spent her summers at Love Lake in northwestern Wisconsin in a close-knit colony of family and friends from St. Paul. As an adult, she visited yearly and on her parents’ death eventually inherited her grandmother’s 1926 cottage. She oversaw a remodel of the cottage that expanded it but returned much of its original 1926 character. In 1954, she was introduced to another consequential lake in her life, Beaver Lake in northwestern New Jersey, where her in-laws had recently bought a cottage. Since a real lake lover like Bix can never have too many cottages that can only be used for the same two months of the year, she and Bill purchased their own rustic island cottage at Beaver Lake in 1971. Over the next 55 years, Bix along with her husband was active in nearly every part of the Beaver Lake community.

Bix and Bill shared a sense of adventure and exploration, whether it was in Morocco, the South of France, or some previously unnoticed backroad in rural New Jersey or Wisconsin. They enjoyed gathering with friends and family; their children can remember many nights of often boisterous conversation, jokes, dancing, and singing late into the night. Bix was also a reader who introduced her children to the public library at an early age. She loved anything creative.

While uninterested in cooking and the domestic arts as a young person, she became fascinated with the art of cooking after taking Chinese cooking lessons at the China Institute in New York City. Most consequentially, she renewed her love of painting, taking classes in New York and New Jersey. Bix was an accomplished visual artist. She was a member of the Piermont Gallery in Piermont, NY and exhibited her work in many solo and group shows in the New York Metropolitan area. She was a member of the National Association of Women Artists, in whose member shows her works also appeared.

In later life, Bill and Bix moved to Kendal-On-Hudson, a CCRC in Sleepy Hollow, New York. There she continued her life of art, cuisine, reading, French conversation club, socializing, and social concern, serving on the Kendal art board and dining committees. She was predeceased by her husband Bill in 2024. Survivors include her children James and his partner Carol Forney, Andrew and his wife Alejandra Ramirez, and Katherine and her grandchildren Jacob Smethurst Rubin and his partner Allison DeCrescenzo, Silvie Smethurst Schlein, and Theadora Smethurst Schlein.

A Requiem Mass and celebration of Bix’s life will be held on Saturday, August 15th at 11:00am at Christ Church San Marcos located at 43 South Broadway, Tarrytown, NY 10591. Following the liturgy, a reception will take place in the church parish hall.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial donations be made to: The New Jersey Highlands Coalition https://njhighlandscoalition.org/donate/

or Landmark Conservancy (Wisconsin) https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/qU3TC_Vfps9Z_M3EStBk1w