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His Own Drummer
Remembering flamboyant man about town Verly E. Smith, thought to be
Notre Dame’s first Black employee — musician, entrepreneur and trainer
for Jack Dempsey and the Four Horsemen

Author: Margaret Fosmoe ’85  Published: October 07, 2021
 Verly Smith

Verly E. Smith was a flamboyant man who drove big cars, wore stylish
hats and enjoyed a good cigar.

He was a part-time trainer for coach Knute Rockne’s football teams
from about 1924 to 1927 — historical records indicate he was Notre
Dame’s first African American employee — while working other jobs in
South Bend and preparing to open his own gymnasium.

Hired to ease the muscle pulls and other injuries of Rockne’s football
players, Smith also took on trainer duties for the Irish basketball,
track and baseball teams.

Flashy. That’s the word that comes to mind as two of Verly Smith’s
grandsons — Bruce Smith, 79, of San Antonio, Texas, and Craig Smith,
72, of St. Charles, Missouri — describe their grandfather.

Bruce was only six years old and Craig wasn’t yet born when Verly
Smith died. But while they were growing up, they heard colorful family
stories about their grandfather. Their father, Alfred Augustus “Red”
Smith, followed in his father’s footsteps as a Notre Dame trainer.

Verly Smith “liked to drive a big car, wear a suit with a vest, wear
nice hats and smoke a cigar. He was fun and flamboyant. People liked
to gather around him,” Bruce Smith says. The family patriarch also was
a well-known man about town and a savvy entrepreneur. His activities
and business ventures received regular mention in local newspapers
throughout his life and career.

Verly E. Smith was born February 6, 1886, in Attica, a small town near
Lafayette, Indiana. Little is known about his childhood. One story
told by Smith family descendants says as an infant Verly was given to
another family to raise, and another version says he spent his early
years in an orphanage and was adopted at about age 7.

George Douglas and Emma (Revels) Smith are the couple who raised him,
according to ancestry records. In 1900, the Smith family was living in
Lorain, Ohio.

By 1905, Verly Smith — not yet 20 years old — had moved to South Bend.
He was listed in the city directory as a musician who was living at a
rooming house. Census records indicate he was a drummer.

In September 1909 in South Bend, Smith, 23, married Ethel Lucas, 27.
It was a second marriage for the bride, who already had two children,
Nellie and Harold. Verly Smith would raise those children as his own,
in addition to the five children the couple had together: Verna,
Alfred, Dewight, Wilma and Marian.

In 1910, Smith and his family were living at 121 West Colfax Avenue,
where Smith operated The Coterie Club, a nightclub and cafe.

The young Smith was doing quite well for himself. The October 1, 1910
Indianapolis Recorder, a Black newspaper that covered statewide news
in African-American circles, noted Smith had just purchased a fine
Empire automobile made in Indianapolis. “He has the distinction of
being the first colored man in the city (of South Bend) to own an
automobile,” the newspaper reported.

By 1915, Smith and his growing family had moved to Benton Harbor,
Michigan. City directories and his World War I draft card indicate he
was hotel proprietor and restaurant owner. By 1920, Smith — then age
34 — also was listed as a masseur at a local bathhouse. Craig Smith
says his grandfather ran sports camps in Benton Harbor, drawing
customers from Chicago who took passenger ships to resorts on the
eastern shores of Lake Michigan.

In later years, Smith was described in news articles as a former
trainer for world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey. Smith’s
initial connection with Dempsey isn’t clear, but the two men may have
first met in 1920, when Dempsey — heavyweight champion since 1919 —
traveled to Benton Harbor to defend his title against challenger Billy
Miske. Smith may have been hired by Dempsey as a trainer for the bout.

Drawing a crowd of more than 11,000, Dempsey vs. Miske was the first
boxing match broadcast live on the radio. Dempsey knocked out Miske in
three rounds, and retained the title for six more years.

  Verly Smith At Nd
Smith at work at Notre Dame
In the early 1920s, Smith was hired as a trainer for the Notre Dame
football team. His grandsons don’t know how or when Smith first met
Knute Rockne or if it was Rockne who offered the job. Verly Smith was
the trainer during the height of Rockne’s coaching career, including
1924 — the season of the Four Horsemen, the famous Irish backfield.
His duties gradually expanded to serving as trainer for other Notre
Dame teams, too.

There are few references to Smith in the University Archives and he
wasn’t listed among the team’s staff in football programs or editions
of the Notre Dame Football Review of that era.

By 1926, Smith and his family had moved back to South Bend. Their home
was at 1002 Campeau Street, just a few blocks south of the Notre Dame
campus. It still stands today.

Smith was a popular figure in town. His role at Notre Dame was widely
known and he was frequently mentioned in South Bend Tribune news
reports during the 1920s.

During that decade, Smith also variously served as a trainer for the
South Bend YMCA basketball league, the South Bend Central and
Mishawaka high school football teams, and the Athletics, a baseball
team fielded by the Studebaker automobile factory. Local high school
players were safe “under the skillful eye of Verly Smith, famous
master of bruises and wrenches,” the Tribune reported.

In June 1926, while still working at Notre Dame, Smith opened an
office downtown in the LaSalle Hotel Annex and offered athletic
training and massages to local businessmen. “His attention is not
needed at the university during the summer months,” the newspaper
reported.

Later that year, he opened a commercial gymnasium at 228 S. Michigan
Street. Local businessmen would stop by to exercise, relax in steam
baths, smoke cigars and get rubdowns for their aching muscles. It was
advertised as the Verly Smith Health and Body Building Institute.

Rockne endorsed Smith and his new venture. The Notre Dame trainer
“knows his business very thoroughly and I believe that any business
man who will give him a little time will find it very, very much worth
while. … I have looked over Mr. Smith’s establishment and I recommend
it very highly to anyone who is interested in health,” Rockne wrote in
a 1926 letter that survives in the University Archives.

Four Horsemen Liniment Sb Tribune
South Bend Tribune
Smith left his job at Notre Dame by fall 1928. During the Great
Depression, he began making and selling a product called Four Horsemen
Liniment, an ointment to relieve pain caused by sprains and sore
muscles.

“During the time I was at Notre Dame as trainer,” Smith told the South
Bend Tribune in 1932, “I perfected the formula. It was a further
improvement on one I had discovered and used successfully while
trainer in Jack Dempsey’s camp. It was in regular use during the
height of Notre Dame’s victorious regime under Knute Rockne.”

“Used and endorsed by the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame” read a
statement on the blue and gold label, which featured a drawing of
Notre Dame’s famous foursome. Four Horsemen Liniment vintage bottles
still occasionally show up on eBay and other online auction sites.

Verly Smith liked to gamble at times. Family lore is that he agreed to
a bet with a man, offering the licensing rights to the Four Horsemen
Liniment as his part of the wager — and lost, Craig Smith says. While
Verly Smith no longer had the rights to Four Horsemen Liniment, he
continued to make and sell the product but didn’t use that name.

Verly Smith also was active in Black affairs, leading a committee that
planned an annual “emancipation celebration” for area African
Americans held at Berrien Springs, Michigan, for several summers in
the mid-1930s, the South Bend Tribune reported.

Son Alfred Augustus “Red” Smith, born in 1912, was an outstanding
football player. (His reddish hair earned him that nickname.) An
Indiana all-state high school player, he later played for Wilberforce
University and West Virginia State College, and in the 1930s for the
Brown Bombers, a professional football team based in New York. The
Bombers were considered the most important all-Black football team of
that era, when segregation still ruled in professional sports and much
of society.

Alfred Smith worked as a trainer for the Notre Dame football,
basketball and track teams in the late 1940s to mid-1950s, during the
years of head coaches Frank Leahy and Terry Brennan. “He learned his
training techniques from his dad,” Bruce Smith says. Alfred Smith also
was head football coach during the 1950s at South Bend Central
Catholic High School and a trainer for professional boxer Archie
Moore, the world light-heavyweight champion. Alfred Smith died in
1990.

Bruce Smith says both his father and grandfather were paid by Notre
Dame in cash, and were not on the regular University payroll. It’s not
clear why, but the grandsons theorize that in those days some
University officials were uneasy about the idea of having Black
employees on the athletics payroll.

“They were very dedicated to Notre Dame,” Bruce Smith says of his
father and grandfather. They each enjoyed working with talented
student-athletes, and they knew the work they performed as trainers
was important, he says.

Verly Smith And Family Circa 1916
The Smith family, circa 1916
The Smith family is connected by marriage to another early Notre Dame
African-American worker, William H. Alexander Sr. Alexander is
believed to have been the University’s first full-time, longtime Black
employee. He worked at Notre Dame from 1934 until 1962, as a residence
hall porter and later as the campus mailman.

Alfred Smith’s daughter, Gwendolyn Patricia Smith, married John
Alexander, one of William H. Alexander’s sons. Gwendolyn Patricia
(Smith) Alexander died in 2000.

Verly Smith’s wife, Ethel, died in 1938. By 1940, Verly Smith, a
widower, was living in Niles, Michigan, and still selling the
liniment.

“TRAINED THE ‘FOUR HORSEMEN’” read a headline above a photo of Verly
Smith in the July 20, 1940 edition of the Chicago Defender, a Black
newspaper. The paper reported Smith’s connection to Rockne, the Four
Horsemen and Dempsey. “Today, Smith lives in Niles, Mich. He is
engaged in the marketing of his own liniment.”

Later in 1940, Smith moved to Culver, Indiana. In August 1943, he
married again, to Alma John Floyd. Together they ran a health farm and
poultry business. He also worked as a trainer at nearby Culver
Military Academy.

The flashy trainer of the Rockne era passed away suddenly in May 1948.

“Verly E. Smith, who was trainer of football teams at Notre Dame in
the days of Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen, died of a heart attack
in his home in Culver, Ind., on May 3, at the age of 61,” the Notre
Dame Alumnus reported in its August 1948 issue. “At one time a trainer
for Jack Dempsey, he was affiliated with Culver Military Academy after
leaving Notre Dame, and in the later years of his life devoted much of
his time to his health farm in Culver.”

Verly Smith was laid to rest at the Masonic Cemetery in Culver.

Margaret Fosmoe is an associate editor of this magazine.

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