A great loss for PASO POR PASO , the Canada-Maya Scholarships and his family and friends.
Apparently Jerry Smith died in his sleep the night of June 10. Oliva Lopez is one of the scholars Jerry recruited for a Canada Maya Scholarship; she saw him Thursday night. He looked tired and ill. When she went to check on him on Friday, he was gone.
The owner of Santander Rooms just off Calle Santander in Panajachel found Jerry Friday morning, informed the police, who then informed the American Embassy who then collected Jerry and the contents of his room.
Jerry had lived as an ex-patriot since 2000 when he decided to make leaving the USA his millennium project. He went to roost in Panajachel, but he had been travelling and visiting there for forty years, ever since his youth when he avoided Vietnam by keeping on the move and sending the State Department a change of address every couple of days.
Jerry eked a meagre living the last couple of years from his website, www.atitlan.net, which he manipulated into one of the top ten Internet sites dealing with Guatemala. His passion and conviction he devoted to Maya people, history and culture. I reckon there weren’t 50 people on the globe who knew as much about the Maya as Jerry.
He was a true intellectual, measured, modest, quiet, clever, insightful, epigrammatically witty. He flavoured his stories needle sharp, chuckle-worthy, and bull’s eye.
I knew him for five years, swapped tales, corresponded daily by email, shared coffee and cigarettes at one of his Calle Santander haunts on our winter visits, but I only know bits of his history.
He was born and raised on Cape Cod a door or two from the Kennedy compound. Rose was a second cousin of his mother or his grandmother or both, I suppose. He and neighbour kids drove the presidential security forces crazy when they tromped by with fishing poles; Massachusetts’ law says you can’t restrict a fisherman’s access to the sea.
I think Jerry had an aeronautical engineering degree and wanted to be an astronaut, but I don’t know for sure. At least he never denied it and certainly he had the mental acuity. Apparently he missed the goal by a hair’s breadth. He was a genetically expert sailor, and from time to time recounted seafaring exploits, not unusual given his heritage. Eventually he became a master carpenter and spent a couple of decades or more building and renovating colossal mansions for preposterously rich American aristocrats. Annually, perhaps as penance, the builders he worked with renovated a heritage church gratis and preserved historic buildings on Cape Cod.
For several years Jerry lived with Stevie Reigel. He and she toured Guatemala enriching the cultural record with about ten thousand photographs of people and country life. Stevie died two years ago. The big C, and Jerry never quite handled his loss.
When I told Jerry a little over a year ago about my hope to create scholarships for Maya youths, he became the project’s chief advocate and the Panajachel anchor. He built the Internet blogs, scouted potential student recipients, helped with the formal interviews, photographed the students, collected student documents; befriended, monitored and advised. His dedication was total.
For Jerry Maya offered profoundly important lessons. “They managed the land for 12,000 years,” he said the other day, “endured 500 years of slavery, and recovered three times from 90% reductions of their numbers.” They knew something we don’t seem to know. Something about plants, agriculture, water management, soil conservation, community responsibility, decision making, resource distribution, and time.
A week ago Jerry offered to come to Canada on a fund raising tour for the scholarships. I am sorry he could make it.
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