The Smoots’ MIT Legacy Is Measurable
Through their giving, Oliver Smoot ’62 and wife, Sandra, leave a mark

Oliver Smoot ’62 occupies a unique place in MIT lore.

As a freshman Lambda Chi Alpha pledge in October 1958, the 5-foot-7-inch-tall Smoot famously was laid down again and again across the Harvard Bridge by his future fraternity brothers, whose marked measurements of the span still can be read today: “364.4 smoots + 1 ear.”

What’s it like to be a unit of measure?

“Shortening,” Smoot says, with a laugh, on a recent Zoom call from his home in San Diego.

“I enjoy talking to people about it. We live in a retirement community of 550 people, and I think probably half of them know this story now. It certainly makes it easier to meet new people here. And I enjoy meeting undergrads who want to have our picture taken together. Hey, this is great fun.”

As it happens, the legacy he and his wife, Sandra, have created at MIT goes beyond markings on the bridge.

Both their children, Stephen Smoot ’90 and Sherry Smoot Freitas MBA ’99, are MIT graduates.

Ollie and Sandy Smoot have established a charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) at MIT that provides them an income during their lives and ultimately will benefit scholarships at the Institute.

The CRUT, which provides tax benefits and is invested alongside the MIT endowment, is a life-income gift that is a popular option for MIT donors.

“What attracted me in the beginning was the ability to get a 5% return on whatever the principal had grown to,” Smoot says.

“At the time, I focused on the amount of money we had contributed to the trust rather than the fact that the endowment was going to grow. That growth in endowment certainly has been a major advantage because, except for one year, the returns have been pretty fantastic.

“What we earn a year has now passed our combined Social Security income. It’s a good deal. And when we both pass away, then it will be there in the endowment to benefit undergraduates. So that’s really a nice thing.”

“There are endless opportunities to give at MIT”
The Smoots previously have donated toward a wide range of causes at MIT, including the Ronald E. McNair ’77 Scholarship Fund, the Women in Technology Employee Resource Group, the Aging Brain Initiative, student wellness, and student life.

“When you retire, it’s time to think about giving back in general because you have to have a purpose, right?” says Smoot. “There are endless opportunities to give at MIT.”

Smoot received his undergraduate degree from MIT in economics, politics, and science, and a law degree from Georgetown University. Following recent conversations with David Singer, the Raphael Dorman-Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science and head of the Department of Political Science, Smoot says he plans to focus his MIT giving on the department’s Strengthening Democracy Initiative, which aims to advance research on the democratic process and ultimately create a leading center for the study of healthy democracies.

“Whether our democracy will survive has become a question, which most of us, I believe, never had doubted,” he says. “So, I’m going to consolidate my giving to go to the Strengthening Democracy Fund. Professor Singer has a real focus in this area and wants to grow it, so it needs funding.”

Learning analytical thinking … and the influence of his fraternity
Smoot, an attorney, made a career in standards and policy within the technology sector. Perhaps quite fittingly, given his status as the inspiration for a whimsical unit of measure, he served in 2001–2002 as chairman of the American National Standards Institute and in 2003–2004 as president of the International Organization for Standardization, the world’s foremost voluntary standards-setting bodies.

“Being an undergraduate at MIT taught me how to think analytically,” Smoot says. “As many grads comment, ‘I didn’t learn how to build an electric motor, but I learned how to figure out how to build an electric motor.’ That was very helpful. Then, when you go to law school, you learn to see the issues that are outside the numbers. I like to say that I went to plenty of presentations of new proposals put on by Harvard grads, and my MIT background enabled me to see when the numbers didn’t add up.”

Lambda Chi Alpha played a central part in his MIT experience. “I think it’s pretty clear I wouldn’t have made it through freshman year if I hadn’t pledged a fraternity,” Smoot says. “In November, I was really having a hard time, and an upperclassman who went on to have a career at Bell Labs started forcing me to do my physics homework and actually think about it. So, I stayed in and thoroughly enjoyed it. Forty guys were united in having a life together and running a house and doing all those things that had to be done.”

He remains in touch with his fraternity brothers to this day, participating in Zoom meetups with other members of his pledge class. “There are 12 of us, and we all know each other’s personalities. It’s a source of good comfort.”

When he went out with six of his fraternity brothers that fall night in 1958, Smoot had no idea he would enter the annals of MIT, to be celebrated alongside the fiberglass cow atop the Great Dome and the exploding balloon at the Harvard–Yale game.

“My recollection, totally uncolored by 65 years passing, is that as pledges we were given these assignments every week to do,” he says. “This was just one more assignment: ‘Let’s get out there, let’s get it done, then we can move on to the next thing.’

“I don’t think it was until the following September that one or more of us said, ‘We ought to force this year’s freshmen to go out and repaint those marks because the weather and the crumbling concrete have caused most of them to disappear.’

“Had we done the markings in chalk, they would only have lasted until the next rainstorm, and none of this would’ve happened.”

Smoot plans to return to MIT for his 65th reunion in 2027 and, while in Cambridge, to visit the Smoot Standard cafe at 313 Massachusetts Avenue named in his honor.

“MIT gave a lot to me in the four years I was there, and my continuing connections have continued to give a lot to me,” he says. “So, I feel that, as an alum, I ought to give back to MIT.”

Contact the MIT Office of Gift Planning

Published on September 28, 2026.