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Isabella "Belle" Pescud Williams Smith
May 16, 1943 - August 7, 2023
Roanoke, Virginia - Isabella "Belle" Pescud Williams Smith, 80, died on Monday, August 7, 2023, in her home in Roanoke, VA. Born on May 16, 1943, in Raleigh, NC, she was the daughter of Ruth Long and Peter Pescud Williams.
She was a graduate of St. Mary's School in Raleigh, NC, and Sweet Briar College. Belle's artistic talents were seen in her award-winning flower arrangements and her long history as an accomplished pianist. At St. John's Episcopal Church, she was a founding member of the St. Cecilia Handbells (40 years), chairman of the Altar Guild, and a member of the vestry.
Her leadership roles include past president of the Mill Mountain Garden Club, past chairman of the Roanoke Committee for the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, and member of the Board of Trustees of St. Mary's School and the Board of the Roanoke Symphony.
She was a sustaining member of the Junior League of the Roanoke Valley and a member of the Roanoke Assembly and the Modern Arts Club. She volunteered for the Discovery Shop and the RAM Shelter for the Homeless.
She was predeceased by her parents, Ruth Long and Peter Pescud Williams, and a brother, Peter Pescud Williams Jr.
She is survived by her husband, William Ware Smith Jr.; a brother, Mason Long Williams and his wife, Catherine Shaw Williams, of Raleigh; a daughter, Elizabeth Arrington Bruner Smith Widerquist and her husband, Karl Widerquist, of New Orleans; a daughter, Ruth Mason Smith Custard and her husband, William Allen Custard III, of Dallas; a son, William Ware Smith III and his wife, Alison Fisher Smith, of Beaufort, NC; a nephew and a niece, Peter Pescud Williams II and Sarah Heath Williams; and six grandchildren, Isabella Willis Pescud Custard, William Allen Custard IV, Franklin Pitts Custard, William Ware Smith IV, Ruth Andersen Smith, and Elisabeth Sailor Smith.
The family wishes to thank the dedicated caregivers of Good Samaritan Hospice.
The Funeral Service will take place at 2 p.m. on Friday, August 11, 2023, at St. John's Episcopal Church, 1 Mountain Ave., SW, Roanoke, VA 24016 with a reception to follow.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to Saint Mary's School, 900 Hillsborough St., Raleigh, NC 27603. Online condolences may be expressed to the family at www.Oakeys.com.
Arrangements by Oakey's Funeral Service, Roanoke Chapel, Roanoke, VA (540) 982-2100.
Published by The News & Observer on Aug. 10, 2023. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/newsobserver/name/isabella-williams-smith-obituary?id=52660024&fhid=15117
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Charles Styron
Belle was my first “girl friend” when we were in the 5th Grade at Ravenscroft School, an elementary Episcopal school that was on Tucker Street and catty-cornered from the Pine State Creamery. I was truly smitten with her, and she appeared to be moderately fond of me. In the spring of 1954, we spent the better part of a Saturday together at her parents’ country estate just off 70 East in what is now Garner. It was a glorious place and a glorious day. In the fall of the same year, I took her out on our “first date.” We went to the Colony Theater—I don’t remember the movie—and the price of admission was 9 cents each. Her mother chaperoned us and sat a few rows back. In the Seventh Grade, a new classmate came to town. My recollection is that his first name was Billy—I can’t remember his last—but whatever it was, he was handsome and could draw with a proficiency that was mesmerizing. Belle took a real shine to him (and he to her), and my introductory romance came to a screeching halt.
In Junior High, I don’t remember seeing Belle at all, but in High School, she distinguished herself as a very bright student and was in the Honor Society during Junior and Senior Years. I had almost no genuine contact with her during these years, but my mother was friends with hers and kept me informed about her now and then after we graduated. Belle’s younger brother, Peter, was senselessly murdered at a landing on the Neuse River in 1972, but I’m not sure where Belle was at the time. I last saw her at our 50th Reunion Gathering at the Raleigh City Museum on Fayetteville Street in 2011. We chatted for a while, and she was as beautiful and cheerful as ever. Her mother, who had great presence and who was strikingly beautiful herself into her 80’s and 90’s, attended my own mother’s Memorial Service at Christ Church in the fall of 2008. She was sitting beside Alice Haywood’s mother, and the three of us reminisced together briefly about old times.
HAIL, BELLE PESCUD WILLIAMS SMITH, HAIL
Charles Styron
12/18/23
Dear Classmates,
The defining moments of our lives are few, and typically, they are comprised of the apogees and the perigees of experience. At least, that is the way it has normally been for me. Occasionally, of course, there will be something so ordinary, so undistinguished in character as to be defining in itself—defining of so, so much of the way things actually are. These defining moments of which I speak are usually recognized in retrospect—recognized by what follows them. As we age, nevertheless, sometimes we are able to recognize them when they occur. This was one of those times for me, and the hyperbolic language that I employ in the paragraph below is intended to mark the extraordinariness of the way I was moved at the time—a movement that even now I can replicate with some vividness in memory. You might say that all such moments in our lives have the potential to be exactly like this, and you would be right. The caveat might be that total and continuing illumination would be required.
* * *
I had a dream last night about a young girl from my early life and a reunion with her. In the dream, she had become a young woman, and I had become a young man. It was a Utopian Spirit Connection, nothing more (and nothing less), but it was beyond longing and realization in this life: a scintillating recollection of Halcyon Youth as well as the imagined vision of the uncertainties of eternity. In the dream, I met her and her betrothed and wished them well with all my heart, knowing that just by knowing her, I had been given more than anyone could ever have wished for. I awoke in the wee hours of the morning, thanking Providence that I had been fortunate enough to experience a few moments of such sublimity. Even though the entire rendezvous had been a Quixotic dream, in the register of affective experience, it strangely counts as vividly as the view from Vogelsang Pass in the Sierras, as mind-stopping as birds chirping during the Eclipse, thinking that it is dusk, as bright as the light in my wife’s and daughter’s eyes, and as totally arresting as Kiri Te Kanawa hitting Puccini High Cs at the MET on Saturday Afternoon.
The young lady was my grade school love, Belle Williams.
HAIL, AGAIN, BELLE PESCUD WILLIAMS SMITH, HAIL
HAIL, THIS MAGNIFICENT LIFE