Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 20, 1992 TAG: 9202200308
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
`NO-CREDIT GUY' TO GET HIS ACCLAIM
You could call him Roanoke County's director of general services.Or you could call him chairman of the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority.
You could even call him lieutenant colonel.
But those who know Gardner W. Smith best call him, simply, "G.W."
And call him they do.
"I have called him on numerous occasions to do things in the community," says Nancy Wilson, a teacher who is president of the Salem chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "His response has always been, `Nancy, tell me what you want and whatever it is, I'll do my best.'
"He never says no, and he always does it with a smile. I just think the world of him."
Smith plays organ and piano and directs the choirs at First Baptist Church in Salem. "We are blessed to have him," the Rev. James A. Braxton says. "I've been in the pastorate for 30-some years, and I have not found any [person] I would put past him."
Smith also is chairman of the church's board of trustees. "He can work with people in such a loving way," Braxton says. "He can keep the waters calmer than most people I've dealt with in leadership roles. Less problems trickle down to me when he's in charge. He is 100 percent-plus dependable."
County Administrator Elmer Hodge feels the same way. "He has exceeded my every expectation," he says of Smith, who went to work for the county in 1987 after retiring from the U.S. Army. "He has the respect of men and women, blacks and whites. He works equally well with all of them."
No doubt, all this praise will embarrass Smith, who calls himself "a no-credit kind of guy." But he's going to hear more on Saturday when he will be honored at the Salem NAACP's Freedom Fund banquet.
Smith, 51, grew up in Salem. His father, the Rev. C.J. Smith, was pastor of First Baptist Church for 31 years. His mother, Irene, taught school in Botetourt and Nelson counties.
"His father was a gentle, kind person - the kind of person who knew it was better to give than to receive," Braxton says. "G.W. is like that, too."
The Rev. Enos Glaspie of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Salem has known the Smith family 40 years. He remembers C.J. Smith well. "I knew if [G.W.] would listen to his father, he would make good. His father was very, very interested in education . . . His father insisted that he be nice. He had great respect for his father."
Despite his father's influence, though, Smith never felt a calling to the ministry. After graduating from G.W. Carver High School, where he was a standout student and athlete, he attended Virginia State College. There, away from the classroom, he was drum major for the 110-piece marching band, which played for NFL halftime shows two or three times each year.
Football fans were thrilled by Smith's high-energy entrance when the band took the field.
"It was about a 40-yard run and jump and a fancy turn," he recalls. "I was in an off-white uniform, and it was not appropriate to make a three-point landing. I did it in rain, snow and ice, but I never fell."
Smith, who is built along the lines of football lineman William "Refrigerator" Perry, senses the reporter's disbelief that he once could have been so agile. "It was 100-and-a-few pounds ago," he says, laughing heartily.
Smith joined ROTC and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army after he graduated in 1963. "Like most people, I was going to do my three years and get out," he says.
Instead, he spent 24 years in the Army's Quartermaster Corps, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He did two tours of duty in Vietnam. On the second tour, he was assistant division supply officer for the First Infantry Division - the Big Red One. He fed 10,000 soldiers each day, replaced lost equipment and oversaw the graves-registration unit.
After Vietnam, he commanded a supply and transport battalion at Fort Ord, Calif., and served five years in Europe. Along the way, he picked up a master's degree in logistics management at the Florida Institute of Technology.
Nearing retirement, Smith was stationed at Fort Lee, Va., and living in Chesterfield County when he heard about the job opening in Roanoke County. He didn't know it at the time he applied, but he had an inside track for the job. Hodge used to work in Chesterfield County, and a member of the Board of Supervisors there who was Smith's military science professor in college gave him a sterling recommendation.
Smith's transition from military to civilian life took place, literally, overnight. "I took off the green suit one day and put on the blue suit the next day," he says.
His homecoming was a joyous one. "When G.W. came back, all the citizens in Salem lit up like Christmas trees," Wilson says. "They knew the family and it was nice to have one of them back - especially G.W. . . . He took on a role as if he'd never left the area."
The job Smith took, director of general services, was a new one. He was put in the potentially sticky position of supervising two longtime employees who previously had reported directly to one of Hodge's assistant administrators. The shake-up stirred some controversy within county government, but Smith says he never felt any prejudice. And, he says, the two demoted employees "did a super job of adjusting."
In his job, Smith oversees garbage collection, communications and building maintenance.
But that's just the beginning of his responsibilities. He is chairman of the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority, which will own and operate the new landfill at Smith Gap. He is chairman of the "Gang of 40," the county's management team. And he is on Hodge's smaller strategy team.
At the time Smith was hired, there were no black department heads in Roanoke County. "I wanted to bring in someone who would help me with that as a role model and help me recruit [other blacks]," Hodge says.
Smith still is the county's only black department head - a role that's not new for him. "There were times [in the Army] when I was the one and only," he says.
Overall, minorities make up about 7 percent of the county's work force. A tight budget and a hiring freeze have made it harder to get more minorities on the payroll. Still, Smith - who is on the county's affirmative action committee - says the county is trying.
"The county adopted an affirmative action program when it didn't really have to. We've raised awareness . . . The first few years I was here, there were hardly any blacks that applied for jobs. We've made some progress. The Board of Supervisors is committed and so is the county administration."
Smith's high profile brings responsibilities in the community, too. He was slow to understand that, he says, but he got the message when members of a small black church that was threatened by the widening of U.S. 221 called him for help.
"It really places a light on me that's a little uncomfortable at times," he says.
But Braxton says Smith fulfills those responsibilities wonderfully. "We are blessed overwhelmingly to have him as a role model, because he is a man. And we are in dire need of male role models."
"He's a genuine role model in the community," Wilson says. "I wish we had a half-dozen more like him."
Keywords:
PROFILE
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.