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(Photo/Tom Smart, Deseret News/Feb. 4, 2009)
SALT LAKE CITY -- Former LDS Church Relief Society General President Barbara Bradshaw Smith has died.
In October 1974, then president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Spencer W. Kimball called her to serve as the Relief Society's 10th general president, a calling she held for nearly 10 years.
She served during a time of national conflict over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. She dined with two U.S. presidents and traveled widely to speak to Church sisters around the world.
She also played an important part in planning and dedicating the Relief Society's Monument to Women in Nauvoo, Ill., her family told the Deseret News.
Following her release from that calling, she wrote several books and continued to be active in her community. She served for a time as the president of American Mothers Incorporated. She was also a member of the Days of '47 committee.
Barbara Smith died Monday night after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis. She was 88.
She was born in Salt Lake City on Jan. 26, 1922, to Daniel Delos and Dorothy Helen Mills Bradshaw. She married Douglas H. Smith, who was later called as a member of the church's Quorum of the Seventy. They had seven children together. Her husband died in 2009.
