LAWTON, Okla. (AP) - From the moment Sam Smith took the job as principal of Geronimo Road Elementary School in 1972, he knew he was given an opportunity to shape the futures of students in an entirely unique environment. It’s no wonder he stayed there for 20 years.
“You couldn’t have forced me to leave even with a mop and bucket of slop,” Smith told The Lawton Constitution.
The fond memories encapsulated in Smith’s mind are practically endless, whether they’re relationships with staff or the tale of his baby squirrel jumping from his pocket and climbing up an employee’s dress. He flips through the pages of his scrapbook compiled by his employees when he retired in 1990, recounting moment after moment with love and admiration in his heart.
“Being at Geronimo Road, it was a super high quality situation for any military dependent to be in,” Smith said.
Smith was born in 1937 in Piedmont. His father, a professional boxer, soon realized that literally fighting through the Depression may not be a viable option. Their family moved to Fort Reno, where his father worked as a civil servant before the post closed. Afterward, employees were allowed to choose where they wanted to re-locate, and Smith’s father soon found himself at Fort Sill building roads.
Smith started school at Medicine Park, but eventually graduated from Lawton High School in 1955.
He described himself as a “typical south side Lawton boy” my leadership training was the famous Troop 13 at his local Presbyterian church. Buddy Braddy, a former LPS Superintendent, mentioned during conversation he was studying elementary education and said the demand for males in the field was going to skyrocket. Smith thought that would be an honorable cause and decided to enroll, but he also credits his desire for education to a brief time in the National Guard.
“The National Guard would require you to conduct classes, prepare lesson plans,” he said “I found out I could do acceptable instruction and I know a little about the leadership of men and being led by other men, that helped me feel I had the talent for it.”
Smith studied at Cameron University, Southwestern Oklahoma State and after he started teaching, he obtained a master’s degree by taking night classes at the University of Oklahoma.
Smith started teaching in 1960 at Will Rogers Elementary School. By 1967, he had become the principal of a school he enjoyed, but he wanted to try his hand at leading a larger school. In 1972, he was assigned to Geronimo Road, where the 850 students, staff and teachers became his second home.
“It felt good, it felt right and it was right,” Smith said. “The education business was really good for my wife and I both.”
Smith explained that back when they started having school on post, whatever building they had available is where they had school for post children. In the 1950s the community recognized the need for something better and public funds were used to build one.
Geronimo Road opened in 1951 with three wings: A, B and C, D wing was added later, he said. But it was filled up as military families were typically larger decades ago with most having three to four dependents. Post housing was full and the school was really full, and Geronimo Road was one of the largest schools in the district at that time.
Smith believes there are benefits to leading a larger school. Of course the budget, usually factored per capita, is larger, providing more options for students, but the staff has more capabilities to cater teaching to students specifically. Five or six teachers could team up to lead a group of 100 to 125 students in their area of specialty and visibly raise the youngsters’ level of performance within a year, he said.
While the word “administrator” sometimes evokes images of a man or woman behind a desk, Smith was involved in every facet of running his school - approving menu planning, hiring , budgeting, setting academic goals, and, as his wife Sandra said, being “a kid with the kids.”
When Melvin Brown would put on “the grandest productions” or school plays, Smith was in charge of the flute players and the scenery, even fabricating hats for costumes. When the PE teachers began training Geronimo Road students to compete in the Lawton Rotary Club Track Meet for the first time - Fort Sill typically organized all athletic events on post so Lawton kids “didn’t know about Geronimo Road”- Smith cut a screen for the kids to bring their own T-shirts to print. He would even dress up as storybook characters to read to students at Elmer Thomas Park.
He was a Renaissance principal with a grand scale.
Even though he was the captain of the ship, Smith believed his staff was the most important part of having a successful school and one of the things he misses most is the daily delight of his peers. Eight administrators he mentored wound up moving on to become principals of their own schools.
“You watched your faculty real close and picked up their strengths,” he said. “One of the things I learned from Hugh Bish was to surround yourself with more talented people than you are, and I surrounded myself with some really strong teachers and my secretary staff.”
Lou Fortney Smith was one of his star secretaries who could memorize everything about a student from the sound of a parent’s voice on the phone to the kind of car they would drive when dropping a student off.
One young art major from Michigan came to Geronimo Road a substitute while he was in the Army, but Smith “saw he had talents.” Smith warned him he would have to wait for one of their art teachers to die before he got the chance to utilize his art degree, so he obtained an emergency certification and wound up staying at Geronimo Road for 40 years.
Not only did Smith expect his teachers to perform well academically, he wanted them to understand the unique situation of the military children in the community.
“If they lived at Fort Sill they had a good chance of getting a job just because they’d know the kids and their situation,” he said. “I didn’t want anybody to feel intimidated by a person in charge. ’They built that building to educate children and give the kids a school, not to give you a job.’ That was a speech they got a lot.”
Smith said he was “proud and happy” that Bish, and Elkins and Dick Neptune, former school administrators he served under, were open, progressive men that allowed him to make the most of the talent in the kids at Geronimo Road.
Because of the uniqueness of military children’s school experiences, Smith said it was “an educator’s dream” to have them as students. They came from supportive families, understood the world was a large, varied place and were resilient and eager to learn.
At one point, Smith teamed up with a fellow graduate student, Lee Anderston, and surveyed segments of the student population at Geronimo Road to determine how military life affected their schooling.
One of the third through fifth-graders surveyed reported attending 18 different schools at that point, with the average student attending three to four schools between kindergarten and sixth grade. Surprisingly, Smith said there were little negative effects on children in DoD schools’ ability to adjust to the changes because they were all cut from the same cloth, so to speak.
“When arriving at a new school, by tomorrow, he was one of the guys,” Smith said.
The variety the changes brought were beneficial as well.
“We had kids that had been all over the world, and we appreciated that,” Smith said. “That school was a gold mine of learning everything across the world. they could come back and educate us as well as we could them.”
Liason officers’ kids were there, plus the assignments for American kids included Italy, Germany, and England.
“One of our parents was on that Pershing missile place, and he had Russians in there all the time,” Smith said. “He came into the school and said the Russian personnel would like to have some information from the elementary type school kids about life in a America and greetings to the Russian kids. So we put together a packet of artwork, took those to the Russians and the kids in Russia sent this display back to the students at Geronimo Road…They appreciated the work, and that just shows the type of stuff that went on.”
The kids brought experiences to the school but they left with new ones only Oklahoma could offer. In 1979, Smith was able to book a guest visit from Mildred Cleghorn, who was born at Fort Sill as an Apache prisoner of war. Cleghorn later became an educator and renowned doll maker, with many of her dolls displayed at the Smithsonian.
“This was probably one my greatest honors, for her to come to our school,” Smith said.
The years went on, the enrollment declined and the education world changed. Smith said he saw Geronimo Road infused with technology after the purchase of their first, $20 computer. The emphasis on special education and individual education plans rose in popularity in the ’80s.
Despite the changes, he stayed true to his love for old school philosophy, and notes handwritten in Big Chief tablets until he retired in 1990. Afterward, Smith taught for six years at St. Mary’s and continued seeing success. He was later inducted into the Order of Saint Barbara.
When he learned his beloved school would be closed, though, Smith said he was actually thrilled.
“I hate to see the old place torn down and closed, but I think that group of kids needs to have this thing happen right out here at Freedom. That will be a great reward for moving around every two years.”
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Information from: The Lawton Constitution, https://www.swoknews.com
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