MEMBER SPOTLIGHT:

Elizabeth Hamilton Smith

Somerset Hills YMCA + Morristown YMCA

“Keep moving to live a good life”

Meet Elizabeth Hamilton Smith, who is a fascinating globetrotter with a zest for life that’s just as abundant as her passport stamps! Elizabeth loves to travel and throughout her life has been to so many places all over the world including Australia, Poland, Russia, France, Greece, Italy, England, and Istanbul, just to name a few.

Her love for travel is what got her to join the Somerset Hills YMCA last September. She had a trip planned to go to Spain in January 2024 and after a fall in the spring, she knew she had to start building up her strength and stamina. She joined the Arthritis Water Class and consistently attended 2 days per week, hired a YMCA personal trainer who got her moving on the stationary bike and she did weekly chair yoga at Brookside. As a long-time member of the Morristown YMCA, she knew how important it is to keep moving so that you can overcome difficulties and enjoy your life. Through her determination and dedication at SHY throughout the fall, she had a successful trip to Spain and even did a fairly rigorous walk through the city of Málaga. She’s looking forward to her next trips to British Columbia and Iceland this summer.

Elizabeth’s world travels are just a piece of her fascinating life. In the early 1960s, she went to college at Western New England College in Springfield, MA. to become a teacher (according to her father, it was she “either go to school to study to be a teacher or a nurse”) but she instead pivoted and attended DePaul University in her 3rd year to get her law degree and then opened up her own practice of family and criminal law. Besides practicing law and caring for her family, she began to enjoy traveling as she became a SCUBA diver and dove in such beautiful places such as Bonaire and the Caribbean and on one of her dives she encountered a moray eel (she and the eel departed their meeting amicably!).

She also became a part of Zonta, which is an international women’s organization that is dedicated to advocating for women’s rights in equality, education, and an end to child marriage and gender-based violence and some of her travels around the world were done on behalf of Zonta.. 

The YMCA is also a place that Elizabeth finds as an opportunity to meet people and expand her network. She still keeps in touch with members from Zonta and the Bar Association but she enjoys that there are opportunities at the Y to do something different, a few weeks ago, she went to a senior game day. “It’s important that these opportunities exist” she stated, especially since it was hard to be isolated during the COVID lockdown.

Having Elizabeth as part of our community gives inspiration to us all to remind us that being a part of something local can help for the expansion to something global. Elizabeth is a true testament of seeing what needs to be done to build a good future, whether it’s going to law school or dedicating herself to moving with the Y in Basking Ridge so that she can enjoy her excursions thousands of miles away. She loves to be a part of her family, her children, and grandchildren who are local, the YMCA community but also she knows that there is a world out there that she can continue to explore.