Richard Peter Smith, 84, of Severna Park, Maryland, passed away on September 15, 2026. Richard was born on November 12, 1941, in Waterbury, Connecticut to the Hon. John Joseph Smith and Eleanor Murnane Smith and grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. He graduated with a B.A. in Business from Georgetown University in 1963, where he swam and played football and met his beloved wife of 47 years, Rändi Sigmund Smith, who was attending the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Richard began a life-long career in the finance industry, first as a trader on Wall Street in New York City and then as a stockbroker for Conning & Company in Hartford, Connecticut. Later he spent 30 years at the Aetna Life and Casualty in Hartford as a pension fund manager, retiring from the company as a Senior Vice President. His primary clients included Ford, Caterpillar, John Deere and the State of California Teachers’ Association. Throughout that time, he also served as the CFO of his wife’s management consulting and professional coaching businesses, whose clients included IBM, Xerox, and Pitney Bowes. He finished his career as an office manager for a smaller boutique insurance company in Columbia, Connecticut, which subcontracted with Lloyd’s of London. While living

in West Hartford, Richard was an active member of St. Peter Claver Catholic Church, the Hartford Golf Club and the Old Guard. After moving to Crofton, Maryland in 2018, Richard became an active member of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Odenton, volunteering on the audio-visual ministry for Mass. He also volunteered for eight years at the Belcher Pavillion Information Desk at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. Over the years, he was a fixture at all his grandchildren’s football, basketball, soccer and baseball games/tournaments, theater productions, art shows and dance recitals. Richard was patient and fearless. He is famously known as an excellent driving teacher, having successfully taught his wife (stick shift), his two daughters and all three grandchildren to drive. A licensed recreational pilot and a certified scuba diver, Richard also loved skiing, sailing and travelling to beaches in Cape Cod, Delaware, California, Hawaii, and the Florida Keys. He was an easy-going big-hearted Irishman with a great sense of humor, and he was the perfect “girl Dad” long before it was cool to be one. He was sadly pre-deceased by his wife, Rändi, after a long struggle with Lupus. Richard is survived by his daughter Robin Lynne Smith and her husband Todd Alan Warner of

Shanghai, China; his daughter Rändi Smith Bessette and her husband Jeffrey Robert Bessette of Maryland; his three grandchildren, Louis John "L.J." Luba III of New York City, Luke Holden Bessette, and Marie Rändi Bessette of Maryland; and his former son-in-law, Louis John Luba, Jr. of Florida. 

A memorial service to celebrate his life will be held on Friday September 25, 2026, at 10 a.m. at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, 1283 Odenton Rd, Odenton, MD 21113. The service will also be livestreamed through the church website.

In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that any support you would like to give be made as a donation to the Lupus Foundation of America, 2121 K Street NW, Suite 200 Washington, DC 20037. https://www.lupus.org/