[Ohio-Talk] Meet Wanda Sloan's

Sun Nov 28 03:28:32 UTC 2021

Very interesting article, thanks for sharing.
Pat 

> On Nov 27, 2021, at 3:57 PM, Cheryl Fields via Ohio-Talk <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
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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.
> 
> Posted In: Campus
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