To Save Her Dream: A Mission of Duty, Friendship, And Justice
by Byron Hall
Category: Biography & Autobiography

Elizabeth C. "Nancy" Smith was a kind and generous woman who loved animals and who desired to protect the environment. She was a visionary who saw the need for preserving open space and rural values in an urbanizing society. She was a courageous defender of property rights who tried to protect her neighbors from injustice and to seek justice for property owners harmed in the development of Columbia, Maryland. For more than 30 years, she fought for her dream of preserving her farm. Arrayed against her were developers and state and county government officials. On Friday night, February 14, 1997, Nancy Smith finished reviewing documents that would preserve her farm for posterity, found them to be satisfactory and stated that she would sign them on Monday. On Saturday she suffered a fatal stroke, leaving the protective documents unsigned. Byron C. Hall, Jr., her friend for nearly 30 years whom she had designated as a trustee, took up her fight to preserve the farm. His mission of more than seven years: To save her dream.