News and Events

 

• Rosemary Smith was recently featured on the "Healing the Grieving Heart"  Radio show with Dr. Gloria Horsley and Dr. Heidi Horsley. (January 31, 2008, Finding Meaning After the Death of Two Children MP3 Link) 

  http://thegriefblog.com/grief-grieving-death-of-a-child/  

  Dinah Taylor was also featured on the show. (January 25, 2007,  Joining in Memory of Jim MP3 Link)

   

• Rosemary Smith was featured on the "Life After Loss" Radio Show, hosted by Carolyn Carlson, on Monday, February 25, 2008 from1:35 to 2:00 PM CST (www.ktoe.com)

• We recently received the following letter from Sundance Film Festival:

  Dear Rosemary,

  On behalf of our programming staff, I would like to thank you for submitting your film to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.  Unfortunately, we are not able to include it in our program this year.  We received nearly one thousand more submissions this year (over 8,500 in total) than we did for the 2007 Festival, so many tough decisions had to be made in order to narrow the field down to under 200 films.  Please rest assured that your work was carefully considered by our programming team, and the decision was incredibly difficult to say the least. 

  My sincere hope is that this decision does not discourage you in any way.  I would like to wish you the best of luck with your film, and we look forward to having the opportunity to view your work in the future.

  Sincerely,

  Geoffrey Gilmore
  Director, Sundance Film Festival

   
• Rosemary and Luther Smith were recently featured in HME Today Magazine http://www.hmetoday.com/issues/articles/2007-11_01.asp (November 2007 Cover Story, Mom and Pop  by Rich Smith)

 

• The documentary Space Between Breaths had its first private screening on May 31, 2007 at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington, KY.

  The film opens with a series of snapshots, snippets of home movies, and an impending sense of utter sorrow.

  A teenage boy smiles on a couch. A little girl with a white ribbon in her hair beams in a flowery dress. A freckle- faced boy tilts his head and squints in an innocent smile. A young man does a back flip into a swimming pool.

  As the images roll by, you realize that each one captures a happy moment in the life of someone who is dead.

  The pictures continue. One shows a 5-year-old boy in a Bugs Bunny T-shirt, making a funny face as he pulls his hand, gooey with pumpkin guts, out of his Halloween creation and his younger brother throws open his mouth in unbridled little-boy joy. Later, the boy wears a life jacket that looks a little too big as he smiles at the controls of a boat. And still later, he appears again - much older now, a red Santa's hat on his head, his younger brother snuggling with Cassie, their Chesapeake Bay retriever, in front of the Christmas tree.

  That boy's name is Matt Kechter. He was killed eight years ago today in the library at Columbine High School.

  And his mom and dad, Ann and Joe Kechter, hope their involvement in the forthcoming documentary Space Between Breaths will somehow help others see that they can face their grief, that they can go on with their lives.

  "That," Ann said, "you can suffer the most incomprehensible event and still have hope for the future."

  You can read the full article about our documentary and the Kechters who lost their son Matthew at Columbine on 4/20/1999 here (Rocky Mountain News).

   

  In the movie Space Between Breaths, there's a moment where a grieving woman who has lost her young daughter to cancer recalls the second she decided not to yield to her grief and let herself die.

  She hears a truck coming. She realizes the driver will not see her before the truck hits her, and knows that she can finally end her pain.

  In that space between breaths, she decides that she will live.

  The death of a child is unfathomable, a despair that changes every succeeding moment. Rosemary and Luther Smith of Beattyville found themselves dealing with that grief, multiplied, when they lost two of their three sons in a traffic accident on the Mountain Parkway almost 15 years ago.

  The tragedy led to Rosemary Smith's volunteer work now, scouring newspapers looking for parents who have lost children and offering them packages of information -- which include her own book on grieving parents, a video, CD and a looseleaf notebook featuring poetry and inspirational sayings.

  It also led the Smiths to produce the movie Space Between Breaths, in which bereaved parents from around the nation talk about how their children died and how they went on to celebrate the memories of the children they lost.

  You can read the full article published on Memorial Day on the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader here.

   

• The The University of the Cumberlands Fine Arts Center Dome was dedicated on June 2, 2001 in the new Grace Crum Rollins Fine Arts Center in The University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky. Like the first dome commissioned by Luther, Rosemary, and Jordan Smith, this dome is dedicated to the memory of their sons and brothers, Drew and Jeremiah Smith and to all the children who have died prematurely across the country.

  Wayne Taylor, a graduate of The University of the Cumberlands in 1972, is again the artist of this inspiring rendering of cherubs involved in the Arts. Mr. Taylor is also the artist responsible for the cover and the chapter illustrations from Rosemary Smith's book, "Children of the Dome."

  

   

• Every year in June, Dr. and Mrs. James Taylor from The University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky sponsor a bereavement conference at the college where Dr. Taylor is the president. The conference is called J.I.M.'s picnic (Joining In Memory) in memory of their only child, Young Jim who died May 20, 1991 in an automobile accident.

  J.I.M.'s picnic began in June of 1993 and has been held on an annual basis since that time. Bereaved parents from the group Fellow Travelers come from across the country for a weekend of sharing the lives of their children who have passed prematurely. Families share dinner and a Candlelight service on the Friday evening before the actual conference registration on Saturday morning. Each J.I.M.'s picnic features speakers in the bereavement field, a balloon lift, and group meetings. J.I.M.'s picnic on June 2, 2001, featured a "Living Room" concert by Grammy nominated recording artist Cindy Bullens. Cindy's CD, "Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth" was written after the loss of her precious daughter Jessie from cancer. 

  For more information about J.I.M.'s picnic, the group Fellow Travelers, or Dinah Taylor's newsletter "Lamentations", please contact Dinah Taylor at the following e-mail address: dinah@cumberlandcollege.edu 

   

• Rosemary's book, Children of the Dome, was published by Pathfinder Publishing of California and released on June 6th, 2000. Andy Thomas from the Andy Thomas Show in Columbia, SC, has agreed to do the reading for the tapes and CDs of the unabridged version of the book.  These should be available in June of 2001. 

 

• Rosemary Smith appeared on WHAS TV (Louisville) on August 9, 2000. This is an Emmy Award winning feature by Rachel Platt. Click here to view the video clip. (You will need RealPlayer or a compatible player to view this clip. To save the clip to your computer, right-click the link and select Save Target As if you are using Internet Explorer, or hold down <SHIFT> while clicking the link if you are using Netscape Navigator.)

 

• Rosemary Smith also appeared on the Early Show (CBS) on September 7, 2000. Click here to view the video clip. (You will need RealPlayer or a compatible player to view this clip. To save the clip to your computer, right-click the link and select Save Target As if you are using Internet Explorer, or hold down <SHIFT> while clicking the link if you are using Netscape Navigator.)