The historic photograph below of the 1947 NCFR conference has special meaning to Laura Smart and her mother, Mollie (above) because Mollie attended the event and is in the photo. (See close-up at the bottom of this page; Mollie is on the far right.)

When Mollie Stevens joined NCFR in 1938, she was a graduate student in child development at the Merrill-Palmer Institute in Detroit, and newly engaged to Russell Smart, whom she met at Merrill-Palmer. In November 1947, Mollie and Rus were living in Ithaca, New York, where Rus taught full time and Mollie taught part time at Cornell University. By that time, Mollie had written two books for parents and was writing a monthly column for Parents Magazine. The Smarts moved to the University of Rhode Island in 1953. By the time of her retirement in 1975, Mollie and Rus had written six textbooks on child development and/or family relations and numerous articles.

When Laura joined NCFR in 1970, she was a university junior majoring in history with the desire to change fields to family relations. After Laura completed her master's degree at Penn State, she and Mollie wrote a textbook, Families: Developing Relationships. Shortly thereafter Laura became a doctoral student at University of Connecticut.  Currently Laura is a department chair at Northern Illinois University. She has held various positions within NCFR throughout her career, including Student News and Views editor, section chair, elections council member, and affiliate council president. She has been a Certified Family Life Educator since 1988.