Michelle Elizabeth Alamilla Smith, 80, of State College, died July 16, 2026 at Foxdale Village. She is now free of her 13-year struggle with dementia and Parkinson’s Disease. Her story began December 30, 1945, in Birmingham, England, born to the late Ernest M. and Doris Barritt Alamilla. Her father was from Belize (then British Honduras) and joined the Royal Colonial Forces in World War II, where he met her mother, who was in the Royal Air Force and teaching an electronics class he was taking. After the war, there being no work in England, the family went back to Belize on a British troop ship. Her parents found work with the United Fruit Company in Honduras in 1948. In 1953 the family (now four) immigrated to Milwaukee, WI, where her father studied civil engineering at Marquette University. The family remained in Milwaukee.
Michelle graduated from Greenfield High in 1963, and attended Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and education in 1970, and a master’s degree in 1979.
In summer 1966, Michelle entered a Peace Corps training program at the University of Notre Dame, for people between their junior and senior years of college. It was there she captured the attention and heart of her future husband, Steve. They were married on June 16, 1967, in Milwaukee. They then embarked for a two-year Peace Corps experience (honeymoon, Steve said) in Bolivia, living in an adobe house with no water or electricity in a small village at 10,000 feet in the Andes. Michelle worked primarily in the local elementary school, collaborating with the teachers in a variety of subjects. She also started a before-school breakfast program, and helped women access the health system.
In August, 1969, after Peace Corps, Michelle and Steve went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Michelle finished her undergraduate degree in Spanish and Education, and began a Master’s program while working as a secretary and retail clerk, before landing a teaching job in Madison.
Michelle, fondly known by her students as “Senora Smith”, spent her entire career teaching high school Spanish in Madison, Wisconsin; Moscow, Idaho; and State College Area High School, retiring in 2008. A dubious distinction is that in her first year at each place teachers held their first-ever strikes. Her fluency in Spanish was complemented by a wide knowledge and love of Latin American and Spanish culture, with which she infused her classes. She gained this knowledge growing up in Honduras, and living in Bolivia, Chile, Spain and Peru, plus travel throughout Latin America and Spain. She supplemented the classroom experiences by taking student groups to Mexico and Spain, for both travel and exchange programs, entailing living with host families and attending classes. As one former colleague wrote, “in the classroom, she radiates a special kind of enthusiasm for the subject matter, appealing to all levels of proficiency, because she has the rare quality of meeting all students on their own ground … Michelle can take credit for a large part of our increase in Spanish enrollment in a period of declining enrollments in general”. She left such an impression that students from 30 years prior would ask her sons “How is Senora Smith?” Whenever she ran into a student from years before, she would address them by the Spanish name they had taken on in her classes: “Hola Ricardo!”, or “Hola Julia”. “Como estas?” When the former student replied “Hola Senora Smith. I am good”, she would counter with “En Espanol, por favor.”
After retiring, she continued her travels to Spain, England, Mexico and Peru. Always an excellent cook (her sons frequently called her for her recipes), one summer she decided to go a step further and enter her apple pie in the Grange Fair. Against stiff competition, she won second place, becoming forever known in the family as the Pie Princess of Centre County.
In addition to her husband, Michelle is survived by two children, Michael B. Smith and his wife Kate of Spokane, WA; Andrew P. Smith and his wife Maureen of Havertown, PA, and granddaughter, Matilda Grace Smith; one brother, Michael Alamilla and his wife Gail of Milwaukee, WI.
The family sincerely thanks the staff of Anthony House at Foxdale Village for the excellent and compassionate care Michelle received over her last 15 months.
A memorial service will be held Friday August 14 at 11 am at Foxdale Village Auditorium, with refreshments to follow in the dining room.
Arrangements are under the care of Koch Funeral Home, State College. Online condolences and signing of the guest book may be entered at www.kochfuneralhome.com.