Whaddaya Got, Loran?

HIGH SCHOOL RECOGNITION

The readers of The Augusta Chronicle first learned about Smith in August of 1956 when The Chronicle published a photo of Smith with Jim L. Gillis Jr., chairman of the Georgia Soil Conservation Committee, “examining a growth of kudzu at the State FFA-FHA Camp in Covington.”

Smith had won the $50 district prize awarded through the Future Farmers of America for a soil and water management project on his family’s farm.

Life on that family farm, near Harrison just off Georgia Highway 15 between Wrightsville and Tennille, was a tough one growing up in the 1940s with the home having no electricity or indoor plumbing.

Yes, he really did know about kerosene lamps, baths in metal wash tubs and two-hole out houses.

He loved checking books about baseball out of the Wrightsville library.  His connections to the outside world also were his family’s radio (listening to the Grand Ole Opry over WSM-AM on Saturday nights) and their subscription to the Dublin Courier-Herald newspaper.

Many years later, Smith would write about his backstage visits to the Opry often thanks to his friend, legendary Opry star and UGA journalism school alumni, Bill Anderson.

“Never thought I’d have a radio presence in my life and could never have imagined I would work with Larry Munson, whose voice I first heard over WSM, the station of the Opry,” Smith recalled.  “Those days on the farm make me realize how fortunate I have been and how important it is to grow up with radio, an imagination and a curiosity.”

In our phone conversation for this article, Smith additionally observed, “I’ve speculated often, are you born with a curiosity or can that be developed?  I don’t really know the answer to that, but I’ve always had a curiosity.

“There’s a difference between having a curiosity and wanting to know how things work and being nosey. I don’t want to ever to put my nose in somebody else’s business.

“There are so many things you can do in this country,” Smith added speaking of his own experiences coming from a self-described “austere” childhood.  “You can succeed by just watching and keeping your nose clean.  But you can enhance it with education, curiosity and a desire to learn.”

Just a couple of months before winning the FFA conservation award, Smith had taken his first trip out of Georgia with his 1956 Wrightsville senior class traveling on a Trailways bus to Washington, D.C., and New York City.

They saw a Major League game between the Washington Senators and Cleveland Indians at Griffith Stadium and visited with U.S. Representative from Georgia Carl Vinson in the District of Columbia.

And in New York City they rode to the top of the Empire State Building and saw Mickey Mantle play at Yankee Stadium.

Back home, Smith wrote a series of stories about the trip for the Wrightsville Headlight newspaper headlined “Seniors in Wonderland.”

Smith loved being close to nature on his family’s farm and planned to study entomology in UGA’s College of Agriculture. But his love of sports changed that major to journalism with his classes being on a different hill of the university.

From his early writings in the Wrightsville newspaper, his by-line began popping up regularly in the Red & Black college newspaper, then published by the UGA journalism school, and the Athens Banner-Herald.

He began knowing sports legends as close friends with one of the first being Forrest “Spec” Towns, born in Fitzgerald, Ga., and reared in Augusta.

Towns graduated from the Academy of Richmond County and earned a track scholarship to UGA in 1933 as a high jumper. He would win a gold medal in the high hurdles at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, with a record time. 

Those were the same track games where German dictator Adolph Hitler saw Black runner Jesse Owens of Ohio prove that athletics have no racial limitations.

Towns became head track coach at UGA in 1938 and would stay in that position until his retirement in 1975. He led the Bulldogs to 21 SEC outdoor titles and five indoor events.

When Towns died in Athens of heart failure at 77 in April 1991, Loran Smith as usual that spring was in Augusta covering the Masters  Tournament. Towns was buried in the Carlton, Ga., Cemetery, located between Comer and Elberton.

“I drove over in the morning,” Smith said of attending the funeral, “and after the service drove back to Augusta.”

In his office, Smith has a piece of the trunk of a tree that was grown from a seedling taken from the Black Forest in Germany. 

Towns, along with other Gold medalists at the 1936 Olympics, were given oak seedlings from the Black Forest by Adolf Hitler.

Dorothea Stegeman, wife of UGA Athletic Director Herman Stegeman, is said to have taken care of the seedling on the way back from Berlin. The Stegemans had accompanied Towns on his history making trip.

“Spec told me that he saw a bunch of the other athletes throwing their saplings into the sea [on the journey back to the U.S.A.],” Smith related. “The seedling brought back by Dorothea Stegeman was planted behind the north stands of Sanford Stadium.”

When the stadium seating was expanded some 30 years later in 1967, the now-grown tree was dug up and replanted near Stegeman Coliseum which had opened in 1964.

“The buildings crew late in the day didn’t make the hole big enough (to remove the tree), and the dumb asses cut the roots off,” Smith said.

“That tree died, but William Tate, our colorful dean of men, got in touch with the German consulate in Atlanta and got a replacement tree from the Black Forest. It didn’t survive either, but a sapling from that replacement tree did survive.”

And part of the trunk of the tree grown from the replacement tree is now a treasured part of Smith’s office because of its unique history.  Smith has been twice to the Berlin stadium where Towns won his gold medal and gazed in awe at Towns’ name on a wall of the stadium.

“I just love history,” he said. “I go to Europe every summer, but haven’t been the last two due to Covid. If something goes wrong health wise, I want to be here.”