A Rosary will be held Tuesday Dec. 2nd at 9:30 am and followed by a funeral Mass at 10am. in St. Katharine Drexel Catholic Church for Diane Knauer Smith, a lifetime resident of Amador County. A private burial will follow in the Plymouth Pioneer Cemetery.

Mrs. Smith, a graduate of Jackson High School, was interested in Art and Journalism and served a quarter as newspaper editor and then was yearbook editor in her senior year. She also contributed to “Student Prints”, an Amador Ledger column for high schoolers. She went to work in Sacramento, married, bought a home and started a family. They moved back to Jackson a few years later.

While her husband worked at Sausmon Motors, Jackson and later at Harbison-Walker, Ione, she worked from home for the Stockton Record, the Sacramento Union, United Press, the Amador Ledger and during election coverage for ABC, NBC and CBS. Because of her husband’s job transfer, she found herself in Indiana, working out of a news bureau in Valparaiso for the Gary Post-Tribune. A staff writer, her specialty was feature writing.

Another job transfer found her in Austin, Texas where she was then a manufacturer’s representative, with accounts in Texas and New Mexico. She then worked as editor of a small Texas weekly newspaper until a recession hit and she was forced to seek other employment, this time with the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

Mrs. Smith worked in medical fraud in the AG’s state workers compensation division for 10 years until retiring and moving back to Amador County.

She worked in editorial for the Amador Ledger-Dispatch for several years before completely retiring. She bought a home in Ione shortly after moving back home but within a few years built a home a few miles east of Fiddletown, in what she called “the piney woods”. She loved landscaping and gardening and the quiet beauty of her five-plus acres and especially enjoyed retirement. She regularly attended church and occasional concerts and Music Circus productions.

Mrs. Smith is survived by her sons, two grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, all of Texas, and a sister ,in California. Her parents were Don and Barbara. Her paternal grandparents’ home is on Broadway.

Memorial contributions may be directed to Catholic Relief Services or Project Hope or Doctors Without Borders.