Mary Elizabeth Daly (“Liz” or “Nonna” to many in Los Alamos) was born December 14,1955, in New Orleans, Louisiana to John J. Smith and Regina Murphy Smith, and passed away on April 12, 2026, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, after a life of many places and adventures.
She was the eldest child of what would eventually be a family of five children. When her father finished his medical internship in New Orleans, LA, the family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas for his residency, and then on to Anchorage, Alaska where he was assigned with the US Air Force. The family was in Anchorage for the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake (the largest recorded earthquake in North America) on March 27, 1964, and little Liz’s photo made national newspapers as she was the first medical patient evacuated out from Anchorage. At the time, she had just been diagnosed with childhood cancer. She survived the cancer and the family left Anchorage after she finished second grade.
They moved three more times (to Arkansas, South Dakota, and Wyoming) before returning to Anchorage after she finished ninth grade, this time as civilians. While in school, Liz was very musically inclined, playing the piano, clarinet, French horn and cello. Liz graduated from Robert Service High School in Anchorage in 1974.
Evidently looking for warmer climes, she headed off to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, a place she had never visited. She earned a degree in chemical engineering in 1978 and worked for a short time in St. Louis before relocating to Bellingham, Washington. While living in Bellingham, she had a long career first as a process engineer and later as the Environmental supervisor with ARCO (later, BP) at the Blaine Cherry Point refinery.
There she met the man she would spend the rest of her life with, John Daly. John and Liz had two daughters. In 2013, Liz retired and she and John moved to Florence, Montana and later to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where both of their daughters live. In Los Alamos, Liz found a new calling in volunteering at Mountain Elementary School where two grandsons still attend, and she devoted thousands of hours to that cause. Liz also enjoyed various hobbies, traveling, and reading to her grandsons. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed in 2024 with a cancer attributed to the (then, experimental) treatments she received in 1964 for her prior cancer. She fought the cancer (and the associated treatment impacts) valiantly till the end, having paid no attention to the shorter timelines medical projections indicated for her life.
She is survived by her husband, two daughters, four grandsons, and her four siblings and their families. She is predeceased by her parents.
A funeral service will be held in Los Alamos on April 24, at 3:00PM at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church , with a reception to follow at the Parish Hall.