Grady Smith was an imposing business and political leader in Augusta who could influence others with his wit, his stature or just his sheer force of will. However, Smith also had a humble side that belied his LBJ swagger and it was that side of him that forged his legacy of community service in Augusta.
Born in 1947, Smith grew up as a typical baby boomer teenager, enjoying beach music and shag dances. He graduated from Richmond Academy in 1965 and then bounced around to no less than six colleges before landing at (then) Augusta College, getting his degree in business.
It took nearly 10 years for Smith to earn his degree. The majority of his time was spent working for his father’s plumbing business as he had since a young boy.
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According to veteran Augusta reporter, Sylvia Cooper, one of Smith’s first plumbing jobs was helping his father install the plumbing at the Municipal Building in the late 1950s when he was 11 years old. Later in life, he would spend quite a bit of time in that building.
Smith’s business degree would serve him well as he joined his father’s plumbing business and along with his brother, John, grew the business and transformed it into Smith Brothers Mechanical as it is known today.
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Success in business gave Smith the time to volunteer and support his alma mater as he and his high school sweetheart Cathy raised their two daughters, Catherine and Ashley.
Smith would start out his community service ambitions by serving on the Augusta State University Board of Trustees and later the ASU Alumni Association and would go on to receive the coveted Golden Keys Award from the university in 1999.
An athletic man since his high school days, Smith enjoyed outdoor activities, but his daughter Catherine Smith McKnight said his least favorite outdoor activity was deer hunting, of which he would show up when invited by friends just to be polite.
“The only thing he ever killed was a snake, and he felt bad about that,” McKnight said.
While game hunting was not his forte, Smith found his outdoor passion in the game of golf and he supported the golf program at his alma mater as director of the ASU Collegiate Invitational, commonly known as the Cleveland Classic, and also ran the ASU Alumni and Friends golf tournament from 1976 to 2001.
Smith would expand his community activities as he continued to be a family man with a sharp eye on being a hands-on parent.
“When Dad said something, we listened. He had a soft side, that’s for sure, but when he said no, he meant no,” McKnight said.
McKnight remembers when she was a student in college, that her father found out that she lied to him about her biology class grade and his response was to require her to pay out of her own pocket to take the course again.
“I didn’t ever fail another course in college; that’s for sure, he taught me a lesson real early on that you have to own up to your failures and then move forward,” McKnight said.
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In 2010, Smith successfully ran for a seat on the Augusta Commission and quickly made a name for himself as a maverick who used his power of persuasion to get constituents’ concerns taken care of and he found plenty of allies willing to work with him.
Former Augusta Commissioner Marion Williams has fond memories of Smith and said that he and Smith became close friends during their time serving together on the Augusta Commission.
“We were strong in what we believed in, we argued, but we were more alike than different, and we found ourselves agreeing with each other all the time” Williams says. “We came up the same way, we were old school, and we were brought up with the old school principles.”
Cooper, who hasn’t hardly missed a commission meeting in decades, remembers Smith as a uniter.
“He just had this knack for avoiding confrontation, he really was someone who didn’t have any enemies. Grady got along with everyone and if people disagreed with him, he would start telling one of his hour-long stories and they would just give up,” Cooper said.
Smith was definitely known for his stories. Cooper says that sometimes Smith would keep her on the phone so long that her phone would grow hot and start burning her ears.
Grady Smith died in 2018, but his legacy lives on in the form of his daughter, Catherine, who is the current Augusta Commissioner for the 3rd district.
“My dad instilled in me both a sense of personal responsibility as well as a sense of civic responsibility and I always tried to live up to his standards, my sister and me, we did not ever want to let him down…We didn’t want to disappoint him.” McKnight said.
Scott Hudson is the Editorial Page Editor of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com.
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