Goodbye to one of a kind

General Article

Here since center's inception, Jeanne-Marie Smith retires from her long career of 'good work' at the end of this month

Dr. John Crowley and Jeanne-Marie Smith have been colleagues for 20 years. Smith retires at the end of this month. Photo by Todd McNaught

For the center's newest employees, the Public Health Sciences Division's former Metropolitan Park campus is merely a 'remember-when' story told by more seasoned colleagues. At the other end of the spectrum are employees like Jeanne-Marie Smith, who not only remembers Met Park but the old First Hill campus — and even the days before Fred Hutchinson formally existed.

"I was at the opening of the center in September 1975," said Smith, a system analyst and programmer with the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) Statistical Center. "I shook hands with President Ford, who told those of us working here to keep up the good work."

After almost 30 years of heeding President Ford's advice, Smith will end her long and productive career at the end of this month. She spent nearly 28 of those years working in multiple positions at Fred Hutchinson, including 14 years with the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG). In 2003, Smith shifted her affiliation to Cancer Research And Biostatistics (CRAB), a local non-profit organization with ties to the center. CRAB, founded in 1997 by PHS investigator Dr. John Crowley, jointly houses the SWOG Statistical Center with PHS and its members collaborate with center investigators on multiple projects. SWOG is a national clinical trials research consortium.

Attention to detail

During her tenure with SWOG, Smith produced of an ever-increasing array of reports to the National Cancer Institute and other regulatory agencies. Her duties included the creation of summaries for grant submissions and progress reports and weekly update reports on clinical trials distributed to group sites around the country. Her SWOG coworkers at CRAB and within the division say they will miss their long-time colleague's dependability and superior attention to detail.

"We try to have two of everything at SWOG but there is only one Jeanne-Marie," said Crowley, head of the SWOG Statistical Center and Smith's colleague of 20 years. "She's involved in many projects and knows so much. We'll really miss her."

'Unbelievable' wealth of skills

Dr. Jacqueline Benedetti, a PHS investigator who has worked with Smith for ten years, described Smith's wealth of knowledge, organizational skills and efficiency as "unbelievable."

"I would say that if a laboratory scientist wants to undertake a cloning project, Jeanne-Marie would be my first-choice subject," she said. "When she is working on a project, we know that we never have to worry about anything."

Upon moving to Seattle from her native northern France in the early 1970s, Smith had originally intended to be a teacher. Instead, she signed up for some computer classes and began looking for a job that would use those skills. Her first job offer was from Dr. Bill Hutchinson, the center's founder, who at the time was still director of the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation (PNRF), a research institute he created in 1956.

Hutchinson hired Smith in March 1975, three months before Fred Hutchinson officially opened its doors. In years since, she has held multiple positions at the center, all built on those computer skills she learned long ago.

"Things were so different then," Smith said. "When I first started here, there was one computer, which was located at the university. We'd connect to it every morning with punch cards."

Although in many ways the work is easier today, she says, there is much more of it. A report that once took two months to produce is now done in days, and the demand to keep up with the ever-increasing amounts of clinical-trial data grows every year.

Those demands will cease at the end of the month — when Smith turns her time towards travel, gardening and her grandchildren — but she looks back on her career with satisfaction.

"It has felt good to make contributions to cancer research," she said. "I've felt proud to work for these organizations."

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