When I last saw Earl Smith Jr. at the inaugural Gary Sports Hall of Fame ceremony, it looked like he could still strap on a pair of shoulder pads and line up at running back. He was 87.
Smith was lean and fit with a strong handshake. Smith’s presence always changed the room when he arrived. He was a cut above.
It wasn’t an accident. “That’s how we’re going to remember him,” his daughter Sherita Smith said of her father’s good looks. “Every day, he’d get up and work out. He used to run across the city.”
Smith was athletic royalty in a city that adored their sports heroes. A football, basketball and track star at Roosevelt, Smith left Gary for five years to attend college at the University of Iowa. He returned to Gary with his degree and never left. Smith died on Thursday. He was 90.
Smith left an indelible legacy in Gary athletics as a player, coach, and administrator. His lifelong goal of creating a Sports Hall of Fame in Gary was realized in 2022 when the GSHF opened.
Former Gary Schools Athletics Director and basketball coach Earl Smith Jr. speaks during a ceremony recognizing the opening of a newly renovated track at West Side Leadership Academy in Gary on Tuesday, June 8, 2021. (Kyle Telechan / Post-Tribune)
Smith pursued it doggedly for years. With the help of Chuck Hughes, they found a wing at IUN that would house the HOF.
“He was a pioneer,” Hughes said. “The Gary Sports Hall of Fame was his crown jewel.”
It was a crown jewel that he nurtured in its early days. Smith and his wife Roberta paid for the plaques and the website in the first year, according to Sherita.
Smith grew up in the golden age of Gary sports. There were seven public high schools: Roosevelt, Tolleston, Emerson, Edison, Lew Wallace, Gary Wirt, and Froebel. In 1968, West Side opened.
Smith graduated from Roosevelt in 1952. He was a member of the first two Roosevelt state championship teams in 1951 and 1952, winning the long jumps in both years. In 1951, Smith set a then-state record with a jump of 23 feet and 2.5 inches. Smith was an All-Big Ten long jumper at Iowa in 1954. That same year, Smith set a new record at Iowa for that era, scoring 66 points in nine games.
Gary Sports Hall of Fame Committee Chairman Earl Smith, on left, shakes hands with board member John Stroia in front of the newly unveiled “Wall of Fame” at the Indiana University Northwest Arts and Sciences building on Wednesday, June 29, 2022. (Kyle Telechan for the Post-Tribune)
Smith returned to Gary, where he spent 56 years as a coach and administrator in the school system. He retired in 2013 as the last City Athletic Director.
He coached basketball at Emerson and Lew Wallace. He also coached track at Frobel, Tolleston and West Side. Smith was inducted into the Indiana Track and Field Hall of Fame, the Indiana Football HOF, the Indiana Basketball HOF and the Gary Sports HOF. His 1975 Emerson team and his 1983 and 1986 Lew Wallace teams made it to semi state (top eight) in basketball. Two of his players, Wallace Bryant and Tellis Frank, played in the NBA. Smith won 323 games as a high school basketball coach.
When Smith returned to Gary, he tried out for the Bears, according to his son Earl Smith III. Smith Jr. wanted to pursue playing in the NFL but he felt his opportunities were limited.
“He thought he should’ve made the team,” Smith III said. “But they only kept a couple of black players. It was different then. He didn’t have an agent.”
Smith pivoted to education. Most people remember him as an AD and basketball coach. But he spent 37 years as a teacher at Banneker Elementary.
“It was all about helping kids not only in athletics but in the classroom,” Sherita said. “He touched so many people.”
Robert Lee, who was the athletic director at West Side for five years before leaving last summer, said Smith helped him reinvent the athletic philosophy for the school system. Gary had always run its athletic programs through a centralized office. When the public schools started closing, they downsized and focused on improving the facilities at West Side, the only non-charter public high school left in the city.
Smith was still making an impact behind the scenes until the very end.
“He was always just a phone call away for me,” Lee said. “He knew everybody. He filled in the blanks for me when I didn’t know something. He could smooth over the edges when there was a problem.”
Sherita said it’s the end of an era for her father’s family. Smith’s sister Earline, an educator and influential state senator for 24 years, died in September. Earl was the last living sibling of five.
“This is just a big loss,” Sherita said.
Gary Sports Hall of Fame Committee Chairman Earl Smith speaks during a press conference announcing the organization’s “Wall of Fame” at the Indiana University Northwest Arts and Sciences building on Wednesday, June 29, 2022. (Kyle Telechan for the Post-Tribune)
A service for Smith will be held at St. Timothy Community Church in Gary at 11 a.m. on January 25. Family hour is from 9 to 10 a.m. at St. Timothy. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking for donations to the Gary Sports Hall of Fame.
Mike Hutton is a freelance columnist for the Post-Tribune.