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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