Samantha Smith (1983: Doomsday)

Samantha Reed Smith was born on June 29, 1972, in the small town of Houlton, Maine on the Canada/United States border, born to Jane Reed and Arthur Smith. At the age of five, she wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth II to express her admiration to the monarch. When Smith had finished second grade in spring 1980, the family settled in Manchester, Maine where she attended Manchester Elementary School. Her father taught literature and writing at the University of Maine at Augusta[4] while her mother worked as a social worker with the Maine Department of Human Services.



==Schoolgirl Politics ==

In November 1982, when Smith was 10 years old, she wrote to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, seeking to understand why the relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were so tense.

Having received a reply in April of 1983, she and her parents visited the Soviet Union in July. Though they did not see the president, the whole world watched as she visited, becoming America's "youngest ambassador."

==After the bombs fell ==

Just over two months after returning from Moscow, though, it seemed that Mr. Andopov had lied. On September 25, 1983, she was finishing her homework when the announcement came over the radio. "Russia" had launched a full nuclear attack against the United States. As the family was taking shelter in the basement, her father, Arthur Smith, had assured her that the USA would never have launched a first strike. The USSR, then, must indeed be as evil as President Reagan had said it was.

Soon after being secured underground, though, the ground was shaking and a roar was heard coming up from the South. Portland and Bath had been hit, but the capital city of Augusta (less than four miles away) had been spared. However, shock waves and a blast of deadly hot air swept through Manchester. Many wooden houses were on fire, and some had fallen. By the time the Smiths climbed out of their shelter, thousands of survivors were flooding into the Augusta area. As a state of emergency was declared, the University of Maine at Augusta, where Arthur Smith was a teacher, was temporarily closed. Its gymnasium was used as a receiving station for refugees. Samantha went with her parents as her mother, Jane Smith, who was a social worker for the state. Her father volunteered to do what he could and Samantha tried to take it all in. But mostly, she was in shock.

As the Augusta area's population swelled to three times normal, government and private relief efforts ran out quickly. And no help seemed to be coming from Washington, DC, any time soon -- if ever, since it was almost certain that the government there had been disrupted beyond belief. Within months, though, the state government in Augusta made a controvesial decision to pull out of town, hoping for better conditions in Bangor. Two convoys were planned, but when the first convoy (with the governor and much of his staff, as well as randomly selected legislators) did not send a messenger back, the second convoy sought shelter among the refugees, acting as volunteers as gang leaders sought to kill them as well.

The local population came under the control of "warlords" that used whatever means necessary to make sure that they and their cronies had what they needed to survive. Most people horded what they could, in hopes that the gangs didn't run out of easier sources first. Some though, formed a resistance underground, harboring the legitimate government. Arthur Smith and his family formed part of that underground. State Senator Gerald Conley, who had been elected "president of the senate" in January, was staying with them.

As president of the senate (elected by the senate), Conley had become governor of the state when all reports were that Governor Brenan was dead. With the Smiths' help, Conley was able to get the surviving government out of town by the cover of night. At Arthur Smith's suggestion, they did not stop in Bangor, but continued to Houlton, on the border with Canada. The Smiths had left there in 1981 when Arthur took the teaching job in Augusta.

In time, the "Provisional Government of Aroostock" was formed, with Gerald Conley as its first president. Arthur Smith became the first president of the University of Aroostock. Jane Smith became Aroostock's first Secretary of Social Welfare. Samantha, in the meantime, started high school.