Leslie Robert Smith, of Lattingtown, dies at 67

Leslie Robert Smith lived life loud and carefree, from his endless singing of favorite songs to his year-round anticipation of birthday and Christmas gifts, his family said.

His traits were endearing, family and friends said. As soon as he spotted relatives or anyone he liked, he’d shout, “My friend” and hug them. He liked to bless himself and expressed happiness by folding his arms and grinning. 

“He just made us laugh,” said his sister Theresa Smith, of Bayport. “He just brought light into a room. When he came in, it was ‘Here I am, full of life,’ and he would engage with everybody.”

Her husband, John Smith, added, “He taught us about the innocence in life.”

Smith, born with a developmental disorder, died Nov. 8. The Lattingtown resident was 67.

He was the third of eight children, said his oldest sibling, Kathy Guastavino, of North Massapequa. “As soon as she heard him cry, she knew something was wrong,” their mother had told her family, Guastavino recalled.

Little Leslie rarely spoke, but his observant and inquisitive nature was obvious early on, siblings said. Before he was 5, he lifted the handbrake in his father’s car and it rolled down into a driveway across the street, with Leslie laughing in the front seat. One night, the toddler was supposed to be sleeping but was found in the basement, eating ice cream by the light of the refrigerator. Just by watching, he taught himself to swim.

At one point, his mother was taking care of three siblings still in diapers, Guastavino said, and her doctor said she’d end up worn down if she didn’t put Leslie into an institution.

That was how he ended up at age 5 or so in the infamous Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, in the same building where ABC reporter Geraldo Rivera and others eventually exposed the abuse, neglect and experimentation on patients. 

The family visited Leslie regularly, speaking through a tiny aperture in a heavy metal door to ask for him, Guastavino recalled, and in the few hours Willowbrook allowed patients to leave the facility, his parents could take him only on short trips. When a visit was over, it often took several employees to drag the struggling boy inside Willowbrook, she said: “He would scream. He wouldn’t go back in there.”

Just before Rivera’s 1972 expose, Leslie was transferred to a Melville group home, where the boy started talking more in the less restrictive setting, his siblings said.

He went on to live in other more supportive settings in homes over the decades, mostly recently a Lattingtown group home run by the nonprofit Quality Services for the Autism Community, known as QSAC, which took him to sports games, camping and volunteer work, such as assembling pens.

“His personality was so dynamic,” said Brian Owens, QSAC director of residential services and former manager of Smith’s group home. “Leslie would always carry a list on him of gifts that he was looking forward to receiving. He would make it a point to enthusiastically show the contents of the list to others.”

 At family gatherings, Smith's quirkiness was celebrated, like his love of dollar bills, which he used at the group home vending machine. Family members would walk past him with dollar bills deliberately peeking out of a pocket and it warmed their hearts when Smith shouted “Ohhhh” in excitement and plucked out the bills.

“He’d snatch it out of your pockets,” John Smith said. “He knew what to do.”

Guastavino said she’ll never forget the time she put her new grandson into her brother’s arms: “He just kissed him. The look on his face, he was smiling and he was so happy. It really touched me.” 

Besides his two sisters, he is also survived by siblings Janette Harden, of East Islip, Bill, of Venice, Florida, Barbara Smith, of Huntington Station, Gregory, of Lindenhurst, and Timothy, of Sayville.

A Mass was celebrated Nov. 13 at St. Francis de Chantal Church in Wantagh, followed by burial at Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury.