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Friends Remember ‘Beautiful and Vibrant’ Smith

Katherine E. Szostak ’05 agreed that the year has given her time to reflect on the event.

“My perspective has become a lot more understanding and peaceful,” Szostak said.

Smith’s friends said that regardless of the time passed, they still feel the loss that her death caused.

Thebaud said that her friends will get together informally this weekend to note the passage of a year.

“My friends and I are probably going to do something small and intimate, but not necessarily sad—it doesn’t necessarily need to have these dark overtones,” Thebaud said. “It will be low-key and casual, we just don’t want to let the day go by unnoticed.”

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Counselors from the mental health services department of University Health Services will be co-hosting a conversation to mark the anniversary of Smith’s death with Leverett, Winthrop and Eliot Houses today, according an e-mail sent out by Winthrop House Senior Tutor James von der Heydt.

Von der Heydt said that those Houses were chosen because Smith’s “intertwined social groups” were strongest in them.

The format will be set by the UHS counselors, von der Heydt said, and will depend on the experiences of those who attend the discussion.

“It’s really about the people who come, not something that can be set in advance,” von der Heydt said of the program for the conversation.

UHS staff members who specialize in depression and bereavement will talk with the group, which will meet at 3:30 p.m. in the Winthrop Senior Common Room.

Winthrop House will also hold a fireside open house tomorrow.

“It will be a time to be together, not to talk about the specific matter necessarily, to be in observance, but not in any ceremonial way,” said von der Heydt, who will host the event in his residence.

-Staff writer Katharine A. Kaplan can be reached at kkaplan@fas.harvard.edu.

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