Richard Smith Taylor, 78, died peacefully at home In Bonaire, Georgia, on May 12, 2026.
Born June 15, 1947, in Raleigh, he was a son of Margaret Greene and Gilbert Smith Taylor.
Richard was devoted to his wife Martha Jean Isleib Taylor. They met at the Unity Center of Peace in Chapel Hill where Richard oversaw the sound system for services.
Most recently he was on the board of directors at the Unity Spiritual Life Center in Macon, Georgia.
He grew up in North Raleigh, helping his father care for beef cattle and tobacco crops.
Richard graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He also held an associate’s degree in electronics.
Richard served in the Air Force during the Vietnam era, handling communications at a base in Greenland.
For many years, he worked as a communications technician, installing nurse call buttons and TV satellite systems for many dialysis centers throughout the southeastern U.S. for the Barefoot Lane Company.
Richard was passionate about trains. He could tell you all the schedules of every train in the United States, where it was going, and what it carried as freight. He would often park his car near some tracks and wait for a train to go by waving at the engineer as it passed.
He was a lifelong volunteer for many causes, including the Red Cross. He was working on donating his seventh gallon of negative O universal blood before his final illness.
He extended his kind heart to the natural world, which led him to eat a meat-free diet throughout his adult life. He was a passionate recycler.
His wife said, “Richard never met a wire he didn’t love, whether to install it into a complex system, or to recycle it.”
He was a skilled photographer and collected special frames for the images he took to give to people he loved.
For five years, Richard and Martha lived and worked on Ocracoke before they moved to Georgia in 2022.
On Ocracoke, Richard wrote stories for the Ocracoke Observer, mainly sports coverage, and won second and third place awards for his stories on the 2022 Ocracoke Dolphins baseball team: a thrilling game and Dolphins finish second.
He also worked for WOVV 90.1 FM, the community radio station, as a producer.
He was predeceased by his twin brother David Gilbert Taylor.
In addition to his wife, Richard is survived by a son, Jackson Richard Taylor (Vanessa) and granddaughter, Theodora, both of Solon, Ohio.
Friends like to say that Richard operated on RST (Richard Smith time), meaning he always lived in the present moment and offered his full attention to whoever or whatever was important to him at the time. The world is a better place because of his gentle, intelligent and kind presence.
In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate donations in his name to the American Red Cross or to the Unity Spiritual Life Center in Macon, Georgia.
