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If ever a guy reinvented himself, it was George Smith, whose funeral service is Thursday.

Growing up in a blue-collar, factory-working family on Ashley Street near the Fairgrounds, he was befriended by then-University of Dayton basketball coach Tom Blackburn, who ran Madden Golf Course in the summers.

Smith worked in the pro shop, did other jobs around the West Dayton course and, along the way, learned not only how to play golf, but how to hustle.

Blackburn had a lot of stories how hed bring George along to some of his golf games, Don Donoher, who followed Blackburn as Flyers coach and was Smiths pal for some 65 years, said with a laugh. George was his ringer.

Smiths golf was so good at Stivers High School that hed end up in the schools Athletic Hall of Fame and get a scholarship to Ohio State.

He lettered three years for the Buckeyes, was the team captain and, as a senior, led OSU to a 22-stroke victory for the Big Ten title.

By the time he graduated, Smith was considered one of the best amateur golfers in the nation, a fact he underscored at the Ohio Amateur championship in 1954 when he was the medalist of the 36-hole qualifier, topping the likes of Arnold Palmer, who had won the tournament the year before when he was stationed in Ohio with the Coast Guard and then had gone on to Wake Forest, and Jack Nicklaus, then a highly-touted prep player at Upper Arlington High outside Columbus.

But then came the match play and, well, the partying from the night before took old Smith down, laughed Donoher. George said his first tee time happened to coincide with just about the time he got in and he missed his first match.

Soon after that Smith suffered a devastating blow that would have forever ended the party for someone with less of a backbone.

Donohers wife-to-be, Sonia, had graduated with George at Stivers and she introduced her high school pal and her beau, who would become great friends.

We were both in ROTC and after college I ended up in Germany and George went to Fort Sill (Oklahoma), Donoher said. Thats where he contacted polio just weeks before the Salk vaccine was released.

Smith lost the ability to walk on his own and from then on was relegated to crutches and cumbersome leg braces and mostly a wheel chair.

He still had that competitive edge and he soon found another sport in which he could channel it. He had been introduced to thoroughbred racing by his college golf coach, Bob Kepler, who was from Dayton and loved to go to the track, and then was further immersed in racing by one of his polio doctors.

He bought his first race horse with George Zimmerman (in 1956), Donoher said. It was called Pineapples. He didnt like the name, he inherited that, but he sure did like the sport.

In 1970 Smith and his friend, local dentist Dr. Wilbur Johnston, bought 110 acres on Nutt Road in Centerville and formed Woodburn Farm.

It would become one of the most prominent thoroughbred farms in the Midwest, producing numerous stakes winners, state champions and graded stakes winners horses like Spoken Fur, Extended Applause, which ran fourth in the Breeders Cup, and Sweet Audrey, which won the Fall City Handicap in Louisville. Soon horses Smith and Johnston owned or bred were ending up in the Winners Circle in places like Hialeah Park, Gulfstream, Churchill Downs, Saratoga, Arlington Park and, of course, nearby River Downs.

Through it all George just kept plugging along, Donoher said:

He lived to be 84 and Ill tell you 84 and polio just dont go together. People marveled at his longevity. But he never complained. Never . He was as tough as nails, right to the end.

That end came last week when he was headed with longtime pal and former UD basketball player Terry Bockhorn and Terrys son to the Miami Valley Raceway in Lebanon. He suffered what Terry believes was a massive heart attack.

Smiths memorial service is at 11 a.m. at St. Georges Episcopal Church (5520 Far Hills Ave.).

The family George is survived by Norma, his wife of 54 years, daughters Audrey Nichols and Amy Sauk and son Austin Kep Smith (another son, Grantland, died in 1999) and five grandchildren will receive friends an hour before the service.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in Smiths memory to Old Friends Farm, a thoroughbred retirement home at 1841 Paynes Depot Road, Georgetown, Ky., 40324.

Loved the sport

Terry Bockhorn remembered the first time he met George:

I was with my brother Arlen (Bucky) and we went to the old Park Row (supper club) after a UD game. We met George and Mick (Don Donoher) there and they said they were going to River Downs the next day.

I said, You guys mind if I tag along?

That was over 40 years ago and Terry tagged along with George ever since.

They used to go to South Florida in the winter when Smith had horses running there, and then they would frequent tracks all over the Midwest.

In the mid-1970s, Smith served as president of the Ohio Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association and he later was a governors appointee on the Thoroughbred Advisory Racing Board.

One of his most noteworthy feats was pulling together the competing thoroughbred and harness industries in Ohio to help bring simulcast racing to the state.

He said he was coming back from Turfway Park in Kentucky where he had watched a simulcast of one of his horses running in Florida and happened to pass the old Lebanon Raceway where he said there were about two cars in the parking lot.

I thought, Why are we dumping all our money in Kentucky? We should have simulcasting at tracks up here.

He met with Lebanon racing kingpin Corwin Nixon and his partner, Lou Carlo, and hammered out a plan they both could live with and then presented it to the Ohio legislature.

A skeptical Carlo told him if he could pull that off hed build him a special room to watch races at the Lebanon track.

The proposal passed and sure enough Lebanon soon had the George Smith VIP room.

It was like a glorified closet, but it was carpeted, had air conditioning, a refrigerator, a desk, a TV and betting machine.

It became a sort of clubhouse for watching the races for Smith and his pals, including Donoher, Bockhorn, Dr. James Gabel, the longtime vet of note and a former Ohio racing commissioner and horse owner, and Jim Morgan, the Stivers and University of Louisville basketball standout, who gave up the NBA to coach at Stebbins High and became the winningest stakes trainer in Ohio thoroughbred history.

Along the way Smith named horses for some of them and others in the community. Donher had Mickey Baskets and Gabel got Commissioner Gabe. Longtime Dayton Daily News sports columnist Si Burick has a horse by the same name and also Simon Punster.

A little over a decade ago Smith named a grey colt later gelded Tom Archdeacon and he had a few nice wins, including the 2007 Awad Stakes at Arlington Park.

Smith said he named the horse for me because he knew I loved the sport. It was the same for the other guys.

And, most of all, it was the same for him.

He loved the sport as much as anyone Ive ever known, Morgan said Wednesday from Florida. He had a great passion for it. George just loved being around racing.

Bockhorn agreed:

That last day we were headed to the track. Like always, he was looking forward to it. George was a gamer right to the end.

More here:
Tom Archdeacon: Celebrating George Smith, local racing legend - MyDaytonDailyNews

A few words on the innocence of Trayvon Martin.

The very idea will outrage certain people. Experience says the notion of Trayvon Martin being innocent will offend them deeply.

But they can get over it. Or not.

Because it is five years now since Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin's unarmed son died, five years since he was killed in Sanford, Fla. by a neighborhood watchman who dubbed him, on sight, a "f------ punk" and one of "these a--holes." Five years. And there are things that need saying. His divorced parents say much of it in "Rest in Power," their new book about the tragedy.

"My son had been intensely alive!" writes Martin. "My son had been a life force, a teenager who had hopes and dreams and so much love. But in death, he became a figure we could only see through the dark mirror of evidence and testimony, a cursed single night when our son and all that life inside him was reduced to a stranger, a black kid in a hoodie, a young man in the shadows. A suspect."

George Zimmerman was the first to make that reduction when he stalked Trayvon through a gated community despite a police dispatcher advising him to stay with his car. Then the police did it, testing the shooting victim for drugs and alcohol while telling his killer to "go home and get some rest." Then the jury did it when they set Zimmerman free.

Much of America did it, too. One reader wrote -- without a shred of evidence -- that Trayvon was "casing" houses when he was shot. This was a boy walking back from 7-Eleven to watch a basketball game at his father's girlfriend's house.

Another person, upset that family photos made Trayvon look too young and, well ... innocent, forwarded a chain email showing a tough-looking man, with beard and mustache, tats on his hands and face, insisting, "This is the real Trayvon." It was actually the real Jayceon "The Game" Taylor, a then-32-year-old rapper. Supplied with a death scene image of Trayvon -- darker skin than Taylor, younger, slimmer, no facial hair, no visible tats -- the woman was unmoved. "They're both Trayvon," she insisted.

Because Trayvon could not, at all costs, be innocent. The very idea was a threat.

So people embraced absurdities. Like a 140-pound boy jumping a man 12 years older and 50 pounds heavier. Like the boy hitting the man 25 or 30 times and bashing his head against concrete, though Zimmerman's "injuries" amounted to a bloody nose and scratches on the back of his head that needed no stitches. Like Trayvon, shot point blank in the heart, dying like a villain in some 1950s Western, groaning, "You got me."

They seized upon his suspension from school. For them, it proved not that he was an ordinary boy who needed -- and was receiving -- the guidance of two loving parents. No, it proved he was not, could never be, innocent. Trayvon was no angel, they would announce triumphantly.

But why did he have to be? And why was there no similar requirement of the killer, who had been arrested once for scuffling with a police officer and had been the subject of a domestic violence restraining order? The answer is too obvious for speaking.

Five years ago, a black boy was shot for nothing. And many Americans made him a blank screen upon which they projected their racialized stereotypes and fears. They could not allow him to be a harmless child walking home. No, they needed his guilt. They knew what it proved if Trayvon Martin was innocent.

Namely, that America was anything but.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald;lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Read more:
Pitts: Five years after his death, a few words about Trayvon - Baltimore Sun

On the fifth anniversary of Trayvon Martins death, the man who took his life joined WeSearchr for an interview in which hediscussed which news organizations truthfully covered the shooting.

George Zimmerman, who killed 17-year-old Martin and was ultimately found not guilty on second-degree murder charges, told WeSearchr host Peter Duke, Fox News was the only one that reported carefully. Zimmerman added, Iwould say Sean Hannity himself was the only person that reported the truth at the time, which was that everyone knew nothing until the trial. And I thank him for that.

Duke later asked Zimmerman how his political outlook has changed in the last five years. Well, I trust that Mr. Trump will do the right thing, he said, adding that his political convictions havent changed over time and that Trump is the right man for the job to make sure that America is great again.

Zimmerman was also asked how he would solve the so-called black crime epidemic if he were president.

You can watch the video of Zimmermans remarks below.

This conversation took place on the fifth anniversary of Martins shooting death, on Sunday, Feb. 26.

Many took time on Sunday to honor Trayvon Martin in continued calls for justice for black lives. Director Ava Duvernay tweeted a photo with a grey sweatshirt with TRAYVON written on it, with the caption, Taking a moment to remember #TrayvonMartin. Our hoodies are still up and the movement is still strong.

On my way to #Oscars. Taking a moment to remember #TrayvonMartin. Our hoodies are still up and the movement is still strong. #OurSonTrayvon pic.twitter.com/PdxuXMktOg

Ava DuVernay (@ava) February 26, 2017

5 yrs ago 2day #TrayvonMartin was killed. 5 yrs later our hoodies r still up bc the movement is still strong @WeAreLiberated #OurSonTrayvon pic.twitter.com/qurb3iPufH

Tracee Ellis Ross (@TraceeEllisRoss) February 26, 2017

5 years ago, the system of white supremacy allowed the racial lynching of an innocent child #TrayvonMartin pic.twitter.com/89nxEKVd2Z

Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) February 26, 2017

Read more here:
George Zimmerman praises Trump and Fox News on 5-year anniversary of Trayvon Martin's death - Raw Story

Miami Herald

A teen was shot by a watchman 5 years ago. And the Trayvon Martin case became a cause Miami Herald Five years ago this week, a Miami-Dade teen was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch captain outside a Central Florida apartment complex. The events that night, involving 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and 28-year-old George Zimmerman. Here are ... and more »

Read the original here:
A teen was shot by a watchman 5 years ago. And the Trayvon Martin case became a cause - Miami Herald

Students stroll around the campus of Spelman College, a historically black college in Atlanta. Chris Shinn/Courtesy of Spelman College hide caption

Students stroll around the campus of Spelman College, a historically black college in Atlanta.

Tales of talented black students on majority-white campuses running through a racial gauntlet that has them questioning their brilliance, abilities and place are familiar to parents like me who have a college-bound child at home.

The trauma that sometimes comes with being a black student at predominately white institutions is tangible. In their 2015 paper, "Reimagining Critical Race Theory in Education: Mental Health, Healing and the Pathway to Liberatory Praxis," Ebony McGee, a professor at Vanderbilt University, and David Stovall, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that black college students who weather the effects of studying and living on predominately white campuses suffer from a "physical and mental wear-and-tear that contributes to a host of psychological and physical ailments."

"We have documented alarming occurrences of anxiety, stress, depression and thoughts of suicide, as well as a host of physical ailments like hair loss, diabetes and heart disease," McGee said in an article on Vanderbilt's website, adding that calls for black students to draw on mental toughness and perseverance what researchers are referring to these days as "grit" overlook the additional burden black students bear as they face off against overt and covert racism.

"We have witnessed black students work themselves to the point of extreme illness in attempting to escape the constant threat of perceived intellectual inferiority," McGee said. "We argue that the current enthusiasm for teaching African American students with psychological traits like grit ignores the significant injustice of societal racism and the toll it takes, even on those students who appear to be the toughest and most successful."

At a historically black college or university (HBCU), students with diverse economic, social and geographic backgrounds share similar cultural and emotional frames of reference that can take the edge off the rigors of college life.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that over the past three years, nearly a third of HBCUs have seen at least a 20 percent increase in applications a spike that correlates with nationwide protests over high profile incidents like George Zimmerman's acquittal in Trayvon Martin's shooting death and Sandra Bland's jail death after a controversial police traffic stop.

Those protests spilled onto college campuses after students at the University of Missouri, citing volatile racial aggression against students of color, demanded and got the November 2015 resignation of the school's president and chancellor, who protesters said failed to address racial problems on campus. Success by Mizzou's students sparked sit-ins, rallies and protests at more than 100 colleges and universities, reverberating all the way through to earlier this month, when Yale University announced that, after campus-wide unrest, it would rename a residential college originally named after an alumnus who was a fierce slavery advocate.

And black parents are lockstep with their children including famous ones like Taraji P. Henson, who publicly announced she decided against sending her son, Marcell Johnson, to the University of Southern California after he said he was racially profiled on the USC campus. She chose Howard University, an HBCU and her alma mater.

"I'm not paying $50,000 so I can't sleep at night wondering is this the night my son is getting racially profiled on campus," Henson said about her decision.

Like her, black parents readily admit to sleeping better at night, too, knowing that their babies are reasonably protected from possible racial violence physically, emotionally, mentally on a campus where they can engage in political, social and creative movements, and still have some modicum of room for joy in an affirming environment amid the political and social upheaval unraveling across the country America.

For black families, the choice of where a child should attend college is every bit as much about self-care as it is about getting a solid education, and HBCUs are building on their reputations for offering both in spades.

Read the original here:
For Black College Prospects, Belonging And Safety Often Top Ivy Prestige - NPR