- Date Of Birth: January 2, 1934
- Date Of Death: January 14, 2014
- State: Utah
Carol Anne Fisher Smith Haws, dancer, director, and choreographer, died in a nursing facility in Farr West, Utah on January 14, 2014, at the age of 80. She was born in Maricopa, California on January 2, 1934, to Frank Truman Fisher and Nellie Rex Smith Fisher, the third of five children. She moved with her family from Maricopa to Santa Maria, then briefly to Alhambra, then to Altadena, where she lived until her first marriage. She was educated at Pasadena City College, Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, and UCLA, where she earned her master’s degree in dance. She married Virgil Bushman Smith in 1953; they had two sons and were later divorced. She married Ervin Lavon (Von) Haws in 1961; they had five more children. They were later divorced but subsequently remarried and remained together until her death.
Carol’s life, passion and profession was dance from the time she was ten years old until her premature retirement at 55, forced on her by spine surgery. She studied with William Christensen at the University of Utah and with Evelyn LeMone at the LeMone Studio in Pasadena, California. She taught for 27 years in the dance department at San Jose State University, where the Carol Anne Haws Award for excellence in performance is still given annually, along with the Carol Anne Haws Scholarship in the department of theater arts. She directed and choreographed a great many shows at the university, including “West Side Story” and “Carousel.” She was active in community theater as well, directing “1776,” “The Boyfriend,” and “Pirates of Penzance” among other musicals and operettas, and directed performances of the Prune Hollow Choral Society, a company of kids ages 14 to 18 who sang and danced their way throughout the Bay Area and toured Romania, Mexico, Hawaii and other places. She choreographed the children of the Tabard Theatre Company in their performance of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” She also directed and choreographed hundreds of dance recitals before, during, and after her career at San Jose State. She directed/choreographed the LDS Church’s Oakland Temple Pageant four times, beginning with the very first one that marked the opening of the temple.
Carol also channeled her energies into genealogy, finding herself fascinated by the implied stories contained in parish records, birth and death dates, marriages, the way certain names vanish from one village and turn up in another. “Everybody has one story to tell,” she liked to say, and she followed the stories she found in the documents and microfilms with eagerness and sympathy.
She found an outlet for her visual artistry in rug-making, winning first prize in a rug-hooking competition in Carmel, California for a rug called “Sun, Moon, and Stars.”
She was a dedicated member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is survived by her husband Von, and her children, Matthew (Debora), Jeffery (Jan), Gretchen Myers (Douglas), Aaron, Rachel Helwig (Keith), Forrest (Cheryl), Nellie Gratton (Jeff), numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren; a sister, Sylvia Bevan (James), and a brother, Franklin (Rosemary Beless). She was preceded in death by her parents, a sister, Mary Lou, and a brother, Truman.
The family wishes to express their thanks to Pamela Hawkes and the staff at Memory Lane Care Home for the excellent and dedicated care they provided to their mother in the final years of her life.
