Mom passed away peacefully at home surrounded by family and friends after a brief but valiant battle with cancer.
Carolyn was born in Bakersfield, CA on August 19, 1947, to Kenneth William Kane and Elina Rauha (Leino) Kane. Carolyn’s mother passed away during the polio epidemic when she was just 15 months old. Her father passed when Carolyn was 5 years old. Carolyn and her brother Leland were raised by foster parents in Bakersfield where she attended local schools until her sophomore year at South High School when they moved to Wasco. It was in Wasco at Carol’s Drive-In that Carolyn would meet her lifelong soulmate and “Sugar Pie” Myron Smith. When Myron returned home from college, she and Myron married. They were sweethearts for 53 years of marriage until Myron passed in 2019.
After high school, Carolyn attended business college and worked as a court reporter in Wasco for her father-in-law Judge Virgil “Smitty” Smith. She would eventually leave that profession when she and Myron moved to Taft to found Taft Funeral Home and Ambulance Service in 1969. They also owned The Boat Shop and Sporting Goods Store, Creekside Farms and Ranch, and most recently Quail Valley Recreational Village in California Hot Springs, CA. During their time in Taft, Carolyn would become an EMT in the early 1970s, a paramedic in the early 1980s, and a Registered Nurse in 1991. Carolyn worked as an emergency room nurse, flight nurse, followed by a 20-year career as a registered nurse at Millennium Surgery Center in Bakersfield, CA. Carolyn was always busy, never retiring. At the time of her cancer diagnosis, she was working in insurance sales in addition to her RV park operations…