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On a late summer evening in 1959 a young gas station attendant in Franklin, Ohio, noticed something that would lead him to a 35-year career in Mansfield City Schools.
Lowell T. Smith, fresh out of Wilmington College, had filled a car with gas and was cleaning the windshield when a small “Wilmington” sticker caught his eye.
“When the driver came out after paying for his gas I asked him if the sticker referred to Wilmington College,” Smith said. “As it turned out, the driver was David Lundberg who had left his teaching and coaching job at Mansfield Senior High School to accept – that very day – a teaching and head football coaching position at Wilmington High School. He had put the Wilmington sticker in the corner of his window that afternoon.”
As the conversation continued Smith explained that he had interviewed for several teaching and coaching positions but had not found a school district that he believed was the right fit. At Wilmington, Smith had played football, basketball and baseball.
Lundberg, who had taught social studies in Mansfield, said the district was looking for someone to replace him in the classroom and handle some coaching duties.
“He gave me the number of Dr. Harriston, the assistant superintendent in Mansfield,” Smith said. “I called the next day, a Wednesday. Harriston told me they were going to finish their interviews on Friday so if I wanted to be considered I would have to come on Thursday. I said I would be there.”
Smith left his parents’ Franklin home in southwestern Warren County at 4 a.m., showered and shaved at the Mansfield YMCA at 8 a.m. and arrived for his initial interview at 10 a.m. Before the day was over he would meet with Senior High Principal Bob Glass, coaches Verne Hoffman and Harry Mehock and have lunch with Superintendent John Rinehart at the Leland Hotel.
A few days later Smith was called back for a second interview, then was offered the job of teaching American history and world geography while serving as an assistant football and track coach.
“Mansfield was my 19th interview that summer but it turned out to be the right one,” he said. “Mansfield was a booming industrial town when I came here in August of 1959. Lots of families were moving in. Ninety new teachers were hired during my first year.”
The surge in enrollment led to overcrowding and double sessions at Senior High during Smith’s first two years. Juniors and seniors attended from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m., freshmen and sophomores from 12:30 to 5:15 p.m. Smith coached during the morning and evening and taught in the afternoon. Double sessions ended when freshmen were transferred to the new Sherman Junior High and the existing Simpson and Appleseed buildings.
Smith moved to Malabar High School when that building opened in 1963, serving as chair of the social studies and humanities programs. His key priorities – curriculum, classroom instruction and student achievement – remained unchanged when he left the classroom in 1971 to begin an 18-year tenure as the district’s executive director of personnel.
Debbie Stull, a teacher at Woodland Elementary, has taught in the district for 39 years. She was hired by Smith.
“Lowell would look at the school, the staff and the kids to see where you would fit best. I think that was a skill of his,” Stull said. “And he would come into the schools regularly. He didn’t come just to see the principal. He would visit the rooms and talk to teachers to ask if they needed anything. He would talk to the kids and to any parents who were there.”
Sherman Elementary teacher Barb Collins recalled her hiring interview.
“Lowell set a timer, then told me to use as many adjectives as I could to describe myself,” Collins said. “You knew in an interview that he was all business. But he also had a way to make you feel like the best teacher in the world. It was genuine and honest.
“The year I lost my job during a reduction in force, Lowell came to the school and talked to me in the hall about being rehired someday. If it’s possible to feel good about losing your job, well, Lowell made me feel that way.”
Sherman teacher Julie Wilson, also one of Smith’s early hires, said the approach to his work could be summed up in two words: honesty and integrity.
Throughout his tenure at Mansfield City Schools and his subsequent career at Ashland University, Smith focused on recruiting and training teachers who knew, or could adapt to, the cultures of their communities. He helped to lead the Grow Your Own program that sought to encourage aspiring students to become teachers. He worked with Mount Vernon Nazarene University and other colleges to place student teachers in schools where they would encounter students from diverse walks of life.
After he left Ashland in 2006 Smith was asked by then-MCS board president Sondra Asher to help lead the Community Coalition, a group formed to advise the school district. He served on the coalition for nearly four years before his election to the board of education in November 2009.
“Things began to change in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Mansfield lost 15,000 jobs and many families left. Enrollment declined. We also lost a lot of PTO leaders and others who were heavily involved with the schools,” Smith said.
“During my time on the Community Coalition I became more informed of what was happening in Mansfield City Schools. I knew Mansfield could be better. That’s what motivated me to run for the board. I talked to people throughout the district. It became apparent to me that we had to come together on common goals and student achievement had to be No. 1.”
One of the board’s important early directives in 2010, Smith said, was to restore the principals’ involvement in interviewing teacher candidates.
“We gave principals a role in interviewing applicants as part of the process of getting to the real core of an individual’s motivation to be a teacher,” he said. “Then principals had to address the cultural and special education needs of their students and families to help select teachers compatible with that culture.”
When he announced in June that he would not seek a second term, Smith said he and Jan, his wife of 53 years and a retired registered nurse, needed more time to follow the activities of their four grandchildren. The Smiths’ son Scott is married and a fourth-grade teacher in the Lakota School District near Cincinnati and daughter Sara, a former kindergarten teacher, is married and lives near Stow.
“I’m not going anywhere. If there is anything I can do after my term ends to support student achievement I will be ready to help,” Smith said.
Superintendent Brian Garverick said few have done as much as Smith to support Mansfield City Schools.
“It is not possible to calculate all of Lowell’s contributions to the district. He has been an advocate for our students, their families and our staff throughout the community for many years,” Garverick said. “Lowell has touched countless lives in so many positive ways.”
Tuesday night Smith, who will be 76 in January, will answer the roll call for his final board of education meeting. Maybe, just maybe, his thoughts will return briefly to that chance encounter on a long-ago summer evening at the gas station in Franklin. Was it coincidence? Fate? Destiny?
For Smith, the reason isn’t as important as the result.
“Mansfield has been very good to my family and me,” he said. “Very good.”
The Lowell Smith file
1959 – B.S. degree from Wilmington College
1960 – Graduate work, Miami University of Ohio
1962 – Master’s degree in educational administration and geography, Bowling Green State University
1965 – John Hay Fellowship in the Humanities, Williams College, Massachusetts
1966-72 – Doctoral graduate work in educational administration and curriculum, Ohio State University
1974-92 – Doctoral graduate work in educational administration and urban studies, University of Akron
1959-71 – Teacher and building-level administrator, Mansfield City Schools.
1971-89 – MCS executive director of personnel, during which time he also served as executive director of pupil personnel services, 1984-86, and executive director of plant services, 1981-84
1989-2006 – Director of the Bachelor’s Plus Program in graduate education for teacher licensure, Ashland University.
2006-09 – Community Coalition, advisory group to MCS
2010-13 – Member, MCS Board of Education; president in 2010 and 2011 |