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Jeffrey L. Smith's mission is to keep people informed about goings-on in Winston-Salem and to do what he can to make living in the city even more fun. As Smitty, Smith writes "Smitty's Community Calendar," a biweekly newsletter that the Winston-Salem Journal publishes on its Web site - JournalNow.com - and that he sends by e-mail directly to 4,000 people. (He estimates that they, in turn, pass it on to perhaps another 2,000 people.)
Smith also writes an about-town column for the weekly Triad Style. And, since the first of the year, he has been setting up dinners to give people the opportunity to meet new people. The nickname "Smitty"appeared of its own accord about five years ago and stuck. Smith has always been naturally outgoing and likes to spend time out and about. As Smitty, he just ratchets it up a notch. It's gotten so that people often recognize him in public and come up - to say hello, to ask about events, to tell him about events they want him to know about, or to bring up subjects that affect people in their 20s and 30s. When he started his e-mail newsletter, he never imagined becoming a public figure. "My whole intention when I started it was for Smitty to be anonymous," he said. But he's not complaining. "A lot of good things come from it," he said. Having people come up to him keeps him better informed about events - and in better touch with people's thoughts about the local social scene - than he might otherwise be. Another thing that serves him well in this role as Smitty is having friends from a wide variety of backgrounds. The circle of friends that grew after he returned to Winston-Salem after college includes people of all sorts of nationalities and ethnic backgrounds - black, white, Hispanic, Indian (as in from India), Christian, Jewish. "My mom called us the Rainbow Coalition," Smith said. The newsletter started out as something he did for friends. Being Smitty has grown to the point that he estimates that he spends 10 to 20 hours a week taking care of Smitty business. During the day, Smith works in Greensboro as a paralegal for Syngenta Crop Protection Inc., a biotechnology company that specializes in such products as pesticides. He comes home to Winston-Salem. A strong supporter of bringing life to downtown, he puts his home where his mouth is. He lives in Albert Hall, a one-time Reynolds factory building that was converted to condominiums. Smith describes himself as a current-events junkie, and to keep up with the world he reads three newspapers in the flesh - the Winston-Salem Journal, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal - and several more online, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. After being born in Gastonia and spending three years in Belmont, Smith grew up in Winston-Salem. He had planned to begin his career elsewhere in the state. But this is where he found a job after college, and he never left. Which is not to say that he hasn't seen much of the rest of the country. He enjoys traveling, and work and fun have taken him to such cities as New York, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle and Victoria, B.C. Smith is the oldest of three children. (To the delight of their mother, Mary Smith, after sojourns elsewhere, his brother and sister also returned to Winston-Salem.) The Smith family lived in Castleshire Woods, a middle-class black neighborhood near the Winston Lake golf course. Smith's school years coincided with the early days of busing in Forsyth County. Officials were trying to make it work by subdividing schools so that a student might go to one school for two years and then transfer to another school. So Smith found himself going to Skyland (now closed), Kernersville Elementary, Brunson, Wiley, Carver and East Forsyth. As disruptive as the process was, it had some fringe benefits. "You got to meet a lot of people from different sides of town," he said. Smith went off to Elon College (now University) with the intention of going into city government. During college, he had two internships with the City of Winston-Salem in traffic engineering. In 1986, he graduated with a degree in public administration. "When I came home in the summer of 1986, I had no intention of staying here," he said. He sent out resumes to municipalities around the state. Nothing. A friend working at a law firm - Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice - said that the firm was hiring paralegals. Smith applied and became a paralegal in the environmental- litigation department. In 1991, he was invited to join the board of ACCES, the volunteer group for young professionals at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. (The name is SECCA backwards.) Smith realized that the group "could be a tool for getting people excited about doing things socially" and encouraged people to join. Membership in the organization grew from 50 to 200, and the group's big Artspedition party drew 600 people. In subsequent years, he worked with other local organizations before deciding to step back a bit, in part because he was doing so much traveling with work. Somewhere along the way, he became an informal social consultant. People would see him and ask him what was going on later. Smith said he began his e-mail newsletter by accident in the spring of 1997. During the week, he and his friends would exchange e-mail messages letting each other know what was going on during the coming weekend. Smith started gathering the e-mails into one file and sending them out to a dozen or so friends. As a joke, he called it Smitty's Community Notes. The list grew to 50 or 60 people. After Journal columnist Mary Giunca mentioned Smitty's Community's Notes in a column in August of 1998, people in the greater community wrote Smith asking to be included. Later that year, Smith began doing more than just listing events in the newsletter. He began writing about issues pertinent to people in their 20s and 30s, such as what the city needs to do to keep people that age from moving away in search of more exciting places to live. When Mayor Jack Cavanagh announced a task force to look into just that issue, Smith sent out an e-mail to 300 to 400 people urging them to send him e-mails with ideas. His plan was to summarize what he learned and present the information at the initial conference. But when he saw how personal the 80 responses he received were, he decided to make copies of many of them and pass them around to people who attended. Smith was invited to become a member of the task force. After 10 years of working hard for free to improve social life in Winston-Salem, Smith started receiving a little money for his efforts when the Journal began posting his newsletter and Triad Style asked him to start writing a column. This year, he added another dimension to the Smitty empire: He arranges what he calls an "Evening with Eight - Plus Smitty!" (He calls his overall business SCNTriad Event Communications.) The biggest consistent complaint he hears is how hard it is to meet people. He decided to do something about it by setting up dinners to give four men and four women a chance to get to know each other. Everyone meets at a local restaurant for dinner, and Smith brings in someone from the local community to talk. One guest was Michael Cunningham, the photographer for the book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats. Another was Margaret Urquhart, a former executive with Krispy Kreme and Lowes Foods. Now that Smith is 37 and within hailing distance of 40, he wonders a bit about what that means for Smitty, whose focus has been on people in their 20s and 30s. He has noticed a natural shift in what he's interested in and how he's interested in spending his time. One way he's dealing with the creeping years is to expand the demographic group that he writes for. So, even if you're older than 40, if you see him out and about, don't be shy about going up and saying hello. |