This is an oral history interview with Mark A. Smith, Jr., class of 1948, conducted by Marilyn Summers on the 10th month of the first day of 1998 at Mr. Smith's office in Atlanta, Georgia. The subject of the interview is his life in general, and specifically his days at Georgia Tech. I almost forgot what day we were on, Mr. 

Smith, but I know we're in your office, and we're on Peachtree Road, quite close to Oglethorpe University to place it, And we've come to listen to your story today. We're very happy to be here. Thank you for being flexible and allowing us to come into your day. 

Well, thank you for coming. 

Now, let's start at the beginning. 

Well, I was born in Atlanta, as a matter of fact. 

At the time, my parents were living in Thomaston, Georgia, but they did not have a hospital in Thomaston, so I was born in Atlanta. I grew up in Thomaston. I went to elementary school and went to high school, went to R. E. Lee Institute, which was a public school in Thomaston. What did your daddy do for a living? 

He was a school superintendent. Oh, he was an educator then. You haven't lived until you've gone to public school with your father as a superintendent. 

Jay, are you telling me the standards were a little high for you? 

Is that it? 

You better not be caught getting in any trouble, something like that? 

Well, that and then, of course, I was well known in the student body as the superintendent's son. Oh, as the superintendent's son. Did you have brothers and sisters? 

No. Oh, boy. 

So it was all on you. 

Well, that worked out very well. 

But when I graduated, I was interested in going to West Point. 

Had you been in ROTC programs in high school? and I wanted to go to West Point, and as an interim sort of a thing, I enrolled in VMI, Virginia Military Institute. 

How did your dad feel about the whole prospect of you going to West Point or VMI? 

Well, he was sure that I was going to college. He was going to let you pick where? 

He was a graduate of Clemson, and of course, we were always... very close to Georgia Tech. I always liked Georgia Tech more than the University of Georgia. 

Because? 

Do you know why? 

Well, no, not really, except that I had always thought Georgia Tech was more of a school and the University of Georgia was somewhat less than the highest educational facility, which I later proved and found out to be the truth. 

But when it came right down to it, the military attracted and interested you, so instead of... Yes, yes. 

So I went to VMI and... 

Now, how old were you? 

Well, at that time, we only went to school for 11 years in Georgia to get out of school, so I was 17. 

So you had probably just turned 17, too. Yes. And you had to make a big decision, and you decided to go away from home and go off to VMI. 

Well, yes. What was that like? different. 

But I had been at VMI a year when the war started. 

And at that time, I got an appointment to West Point and I decided that the war might not last long enough for me to get out of West Point. 

So I stayed at VMI. 

So you had an interest in actually being involved in World War II? 

Oh, yeah. Everybody did, I think. 

Even when you were in high school, you were aware the war was coming, or when did you first become aware of the fact that there was going to be a war and that you had patriotic stirrings? 

In the afternoon of Pearl Harbor. Even though you were just a child? 

No, I was not a child. I was off in college. 

Well, yeah, but you were still a child. Nobody thought that... No, I don't think anybody realized that the war was going to start. 

So you were stunned when you heard this and realized you wanted to go off and fight for your country. 

And the country cooperated in that thought, because when I had finished two years at VMI, they took everybody. Let's not hurry ahead. 

I want to go back to, when you thought you wanted to go to West Point, what steps would you have taken? 

What did you do to see if you could go to West Point? 

I mean, doesn't that require a bit? 

It's a big deal, isn't it? 

I mean, you don't just go there. Oh, yeah. You have to indicate a desire, and you have to try to. 

At that time, it was probably not as hard as it is now, but you had to get a congressman or a senator to appoint you, or you had to take an examination. There were probably eight or ten different avenues. 

Well, had you gotten to the point where you'd ask somebody to sponsor or appoint you? 

Oh, yeah. 

So you were dead serious about this then. No. 

And I had been advised, and my daddy agreed that since we only had 11 years of school, that most other people had 12. And most people going to West Point at that time had been in college for a year or two. 

So the standards were going to be very high, then? 

Yeah. 

So you might get some other experiences, what's the record? 

So I had the congressman, and for goodness sakes, I can't remember his name, but he gave me the appointment not for this year, but for next year kind of a deal. 

To help you go get some other education and get yourself ready for it? 

Well, I think his appointments were probably already taken up, but he promised one. 

But that was not a bad idea. promised one for the next year and so so you went to vmi i went to vm because that was it's going to be your interim year until you made that decision what's your mother think about you going off to vmi uh you were her only child well that didn't that's that's true but i mean she wasn't that concerned about it she thought you were ready to go off huh well not really but then again she didn't think i was ready to get married anything else she's never quite been with the program for you. 

So, okay, you are 17 years old, and would you go by train or by automobile? 

How did you get up to me? 

I went up. There was another. By this time, we had moved from Thomaston to Macon. 

My daddy moved from Thomaston and became superintendent in Bibb County and Macon, Georgia, in January of my senior year in high school. And he drove back and forth until June of that year because he didn't want to move me. 

Oh, that was nice, wasn't it? 

In the senior year, wasn't it? 

Yeah, so you didn't have to give up your senior year. 

So then when I graduated from R. E. Lee, we moved to Macon. 

And I rode up, drove up to VMI with another fella in, from Macon who was going to VMI, and his father. And it took us, it seems to me like it took us two days. Wow. Just like. It was not. The roads were not all that good. Yeah. And. You knew you were off for an adventure by that time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so we arrived at VMI and immediately were immersed in the system. 

But it was a lot of fun. I'm very glad I did that. 

Well, it must have matured you very quickly. 

I mean, you got a real sense of discipline and responsibility right off quick, did you? 

Yeah, that is true. Do you remember where you were when you heard about Pearl Harbor? 

Yes, we were playing blackjack. It was a Sunday afternoon. And I was in this other boy's room, and there were four or five of us. You know, blackjack is an intellectual game. Uh-huh. I've heard that before, intellectual. 

But it was about, oh, sometime in the afternoon. At VMI, everybody had to go to church, and it was well after church. And we always had Sunday afternoon off. 

Of course, there wasn't a whole lot to do in Lexington except go to the movie, and if you'd already seen the movie, there was nothing to do. 

But that's when I heard about the war. 

Were you guys scared? 

Was that a scary thing to hear? 

Or did you still feel real brave? 

Not really. 

Well, that decision wasn't... it was not necessary to make that decision. I mean, they weren't right outside the window, you know. They were across the ocean. And we were a little bit... we had a couple of... well, we had several of the professors at VMI who were old soldiers and had retired and so forth. 

So it was the military we were comfortable with because we knew about it. You had chosen that last time. 

We didn't know what it was all about that we found out later, but at that time we thought we knew everything. 

Isn't it funny how you do think you know everything at that age? 

And all of a sudden you learn something. 

But anyway, I turned down the appointment to West Point and stayed at VMI. 

And along about, oh, it must have been March or April of my second year at VMI is when they started bringing everybody into the Army, and at that time the Army Air Corps and the Navy. You were all of 19 years old now, second year? 

Yeah, I was 19 in April. 

Now, some of the boys up there left in my class, left in May, I think, to go to the Air Corps. All of us left after the end of school in June. Everybody went who was physically able. 

And we had about four people, I think, in my class who had heart murmurs or some other physical difficulty that made them ineligible for the Army. 

But everybody else went in the service. And at that time, of course, if you graduated from VMI, you got a commission immediately. 

Well, you had two years. I only had two years. Yeah, so you weren't getting a commission. 

So if you had three years at VMI, you got a guarantee to go to Officer's Candidate School as soon as their space became available, which might have been two weeks or two months, but, you know, two or three months anyway. What, about two years? 

And if you'd been there for two years, you got a handshake. I was afraid of that. And a wish of good luck. And so with that in hand, your handshake was good luck. What did you do? 

Did you enlist somewhere, or were you automatically... 

Well, no, we were already enlisted in the Enlisted Reserve Corps. Everybody did that in November, I guess, right after the war broke out. And the general up there said that this is what you ought to do. And you didn't. Don't leave and just go sign up. Enlist in the Enlisted Reserve Corps, and you can finish school and get a commission and so forth. 

Well, he was wrong, too. 

But then I went in the Army, and I think we finished the year at VMI in early June, and I went in the Army in June 15th, and reported in at Fort McPherson, and went up to Camp Croft, South Carolina, which is right out of Spartanburg. 

And about that time, they were thinking that everybody who had been in college or was going to college could apply for a program they called the Army Specialized Training Program, or in the Navy, V-12s or V-whatever they had. And then they would send you back to school. 

We later found out that the reason they did that is because they had all those vacant beds in these schools, and they didn't have those vacant beds in Army camps. 

So they gave us basic training, and then I was sent to the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. A good southern boy up north. 

Yeah, and we had some people that went to Newark, New Jersey, and several days later So they found their way back to Newark, Delaware, and the University of Delaware had undoubtedly the finest chemical department in the world, because DuPont was running it. 

But you had been studying what? 

Civil engineering. 

Civil engineering at BMI, so where did that factor into you? 

Well, they had a civil engineering class. 

So they did let you go back to that? 

Yeah. 

Well, see, while I was at Camp Prompt, every Saturday, we would have batteries of tests of everything, mathematics, history, English, physics, and all that. 

We were trying to find all the pieces in there, huh? 

Well, if you did not make a very good grade, or a grade at all, then you stayed in the Army. 

And if you made, then they graded you as to what you knew as to where in the Army specialized training program you'd be put. See whether you'd be put as a second quarter, third quarter, second year, whatever. 

And fortunately I got in what they called the civil engineering, which was about, I guess it would be equivalent to a second or third year college. And it was set up on a three -month basis, on a quarterly basis. And I had two quarters at the University of Delaware. 

Then they were getting ready for the invasion and nobody told us, but they had an enormous number of troops already in England. 

So they had room in the camps in the United States. 

So then they looked at everybody's grades, and if you were a real super brain, you stayed in the ASTP. Otherwise, you went back to the Army. And so otherwise, I went to the 104th Infantry Division. 

But we had, I think, about 450 people at the University of Delaware, and 14 of them stayed in the program. Not very good odds at all, huh? 

Well, they were real smart kids. 

So what happened to you in the 112th? 

Fourth, 104th. 

On the 4th, excuse me, what happened? 

Well, we stayed out in Colorado Springs for about six months and then went to Europe. 

So join the Army and see the world. Yes, indeed. And where did you go in Europe? 

Well, we were in the first convoy that landed in France. everybody else had gone to England and then across the channel I landed at D plus 91 which was 91 days after D-Day which was unfortunate because if I had gotten there a day earlier I would have gotten another five points and I would have probably come home six months earlier oh so it did have an effect on you by a day didn't it a day made a difference did you go over on a troop ship Yes. Across the ocean? 

We left, uh... I can't imagine what young men were thinking. Uh... 

I mean, you were so many of you, and you were all on the ship, and you didn't know where you were going, or exactly, did you? 

Well, we had a pretty good idea that we weren't going to the Pacific. I mean, when you sail out of New York... You were going across. But, uh, we went over all named. The U. S. 

Army Transport George Washington, which was an old German boat that they had taken from the Germans after World War I as reparations. MS. It was very old then. 

Yeah, but it was in pretty good shape, and it had been used as a troop ship all those years, mainly taking troops back and forth to Hawaii. 

But they brought it over, and they put half of the division on the George Washington, which was 7,500 men. And we had almost enough bunks for half of the people. Oh, my. And so half of them were sleeping on the deck. 

But it didn't really matter because you spent the whole day in the chow line. I mean, they fed us two meals a day. 

And it took that long for everybody to get fed? 

And the chow line wandered all over the ship, see, and half of it was up on the deck so you could see. and you could see the ocean and then you go back and you get you get to where you forget where you're eating breakfast or lunch or supper how long of a trip was that 11 days 11 days and it was not warm it cannot be warm out in the Atlantic Ocean well it wasn't that we always on wool uniform so then that wasn't a problem we were in we were in the largest convoy that crossed up to that time so you saw other ships around you yeah we had there were three infantry divisions in the convoy first we went up to Boston and that's when they put the whole thing together and then we set sail we never did get off the boat I mean the boat went up to Boston and picked everybody up but we had had 75 ships in the convoy and we couldn't even see the end ship because Because they had the troop carriers in the middle of the convoy. And they had two British aircraft carriers along. 

So you were well protected. You were almost being herded across, is what you're saying there. 

Well, yeah. It worked out that way, but... 

Had the stories about D-Day started to come back to you all already? 

I mean, were you aware about D-Day? 

Did you know what had happened? 

We knew we won, yeah. 

But did you know about the horrible loss of life and all the trauma of it, or did they spare that? 

Oh, no. We knew everything was going on, because we all had friends that had already been there or sent home. 

But we had a, going over, they had a boat drill. You know, the first land was still in slight when they had the boat drill. And they would blow the horn to abandon ship. 

And you're supposed to go over and line up at the hole where the rest of the, where the ladder is to get out. and when the people coming up when they all got out then it was your turn to go out and they ran the thing for five minutes and then they blew the all clear and the people down below decks were still coming out but so we decided we decided that maybe we shouldn't get hit by a torpedo since we couldn't get off of the boat it wouldn't have been a good idea at all but pretty trying time you sure know what it is to be in a crowded condition don't you oh yeah trying times what happened when you landed well as i say we were the first ones that landed straight in france so we landed in cherbourg and they had just cleaned it up because the germans stayed in cherbourg you know they went by them and they came back clean them out and we got out uh got off the boat on a great, no I don't know, great big barge and they took us from the boat. They couldn't tie the boat up in the dock, but there wasn't any dock left. And so we get off on the barge and the barge, I think they told me, took 800 people. It was a big big old thing. 

And our equipment was supposedly set up in these hedgerows, all the trucks and the guns and everything else. We were supposed to go to that particular location and get our equipment and be ready to go. 

But Patton had stolen all the equipment. 

So when we got there was no trucks, there was no guns, there was no nothing except Rotten Apples. 7,500 guys in Rotten Apples. 

Well, no, it was 15,000 in the whole division. Oh, the whole division guy? 

Yeah. There it was. 

And the other, there were two other divisions that were in the same convoy, and they both went to England and, of course, came to Europe shortly thereafter. Yeah. 

So things were a little confused when we got to Normandy, and since there wasn't any equipment, they took everybody in the division who had a driver's license, and we started driving the Red Ball, which was a special supply train thing that the trucks went down to the beach, and they loaded the trucks and they sent them forward to wherever they were going. 

And they put a big number on, I was driving a red ball, and they put a big number on a piece of paper on your windshield. 

And the MPs and the traffic people along the way would point you the direction to go according to that number. And the trucks had a big red ball painted on them, that's why they called it a red ball. 

So you drive that truck for six hours, and you end up in a little camp, stopping place, stagecoach house or something. And you sleep six hours, and you get back out and get on another truck. See, yours is long gone. And we did that for about, I guess, three weeks. 

So it's kind of like the Pony Express. You just, new vehicles, new vehicles. They took everybody in the division that had a driver's license and put them on the red ball. 

Then they took one regiment and put them guarding the pipeline that we had built a pipeline from the beachhead all the way across France, as far as it would go for gasoline and petroleum products. And it had to be protected, of course. And they were walking guard along the pipeline. And the rest of them were guarding trains. 

And after about three weeks of that, I pulled in one night, and there was a notice on the bulletin board that said, All 104th Infantry Division, report back to your outfit. And so then I got on the truck going the other way. because these truck things were run out on round trips. They were going full to the front, empty back to the beach. And we all got back together in Normandy and then went into the line up in Holland with the British. How? 

How did you get there? 

In trucks? 

Oh, we had our stuff by then, yeah. 

Oh, it all had come? 

When they got all the equipment in and the artillery pieces and everything else, that's when they put the word out everybody go back i see and so the whole division gathered up again and we we moved impossible that you could get that many men and things all organized by by word of mouth oh no they were all communicating i mean they had a each place we stopped spending the night was in fact an army camp so somebody was giving you directions oh yeah and when you got in there they would they would tell you what truck you were supposed to get on the next day And when they just put the word out that all the 104th Infantry Division report back to them. Everybody knew what they had to do then. Yeah. 

And so we all got back together, and then we rode the vehicles across France and went into the line in Belgium and fought across into Holland and up to the Moss Estuary, which is where the Rhine River goes into the North Sea. 

So you covered quite a bit of territory then. 

Well, then when we got up there, what we were doing, I found out later, was clearing the port of Antwerp. 

And so when we did that, the English took over and we went back down to Aachen and were put in with the First Army. And then we moved along from Auchin to Duren and Cologne and later across the river. 

How much time? 

How long were you there? 

Oh, I guess we were in Holland a couple of months, towards Holland a couple of months. And then the rest of the time, it must have been four or five months before the war was over. 

So you had a pretty good stint of active duty there, where you were acting. 

Well, I was in Europe a year before the war was over and a year after. That was a good long time. Yeah. That was where that one day came in, you see. 

When the war was over, they were sending people home because they didn't have plenty of transportation. Right. It was limited. And they would send you home based on how many points you had earned. 

And you got a point for one point a month for being in the Army, me, two points a month for being overseas, and five points for each battle that you were in, which is up until 90 days after D-Day was the Normandy invasion. Then after that there was, what did they call it? 

Northern Germany, I think. Then if you were in the Battle of the Bulge, you got another five points. You got all these things. And it was just a question of adding up the numbers. At the end, of course, nobody told us what was happening until the end. 

And then, of course the enlisted men they got so I don't know when I got home when it finally came to be my time with 105 points I think it was or something like that they were bringing enlisted men back who had 20 point which is all right I mean it was over but and it was a year later but but they all they had a fairly wide discrepancy with the enlisted men who had only had 35 or 40 points were coming home when the officers had to have more than that. 

Did you have enough of a military experience to get it out of your system? 

Well, yes and no, but I ended up staying in the reserve. MS. 

Well, you didn't, did you think about, I was wondering, did you think about going back to West Point? 

No, no. That didn't crush your mind anymore. I didn't think about going back to West Point. You weren't going to West Point. 

Okay, so you had had your... And they did, they were a little bit, they were looking after the West Pointers. 

Because no matter what rank you had, you didn't get commissioned service time if you were under 25 years old. In other words, your seniority time did not start until you were 25. And, of course, the West Pointers' time started as soon as they got out of school. Is that fair? 

No, it's not fair. 

But then again, they are professionals. Their buddies were running the Pentagon, so they were looking out to each other. That's the reason for it. Yeah, but you knew then you didn't want to have a professional military career. 

Well, no, they made it to you. This was ridiculous. I was only 22 years old. I had another three years before they even started counting. Yeah, so you were ready to save. And I was married. I got married before we went overseas. 

Well, now, how did that happen? 

You didn't tell us about that. 

Well, supposedly, while I was at Delaware, everybody knew what was happening. and you would get a week's furlough between every quarter of school. And we knew when that was coming, and I arranged to get married at that time. Knowing you were going to go overseas? 

No, I didn't know that then. 

I knew it was eventually, but we were aiming at this week's furlough after the quarter of academic work, and that's when the wedding was scheduled and of course the the government did not cooperate and we did not have that furlough so at the at the end of the academic quarter a war week before the end of the academic quarter everybody got their orders as to what army unit they were going to and i was assigned to the 104th infantry division in colorado springs But we had a week, and so I called home, and they sent out the cancellations on the wedding. Oh, they had already sent invitations? 

Oh, yeah. 

Well, see, this was just ten days before the wedding. Tell me what your bride's name was. Lurleen. Lurleen Turner. Turner, okay. 

So Mrs. Turner, her mama. Oh, yeah, they had a house full of presents down there and everything else. 

Well, so we revved it up, and instead of getting married on the, oh, I've forgotten what the day it was. We got married while I was still at the University of Delaware. What month was that? 

What month? 

March 24th. 

Okay, so you were supposed to get married, let's say, June or something. Oh, no, we were supposed to get married maybe the 29th or something like that. Oh, so it was just moved up a little bit. Yeah. 

Well, we didn't know about it, but a week ahead of time. Wow. Did they pull it off? 

They get a wedding? 

Oh, yeah. We got it all fixed. We got married. 

Well, Lurleen came up with my mother and daddy. Her folks did not come to the wedding. 

So they drove up. They accumulated gas coupons from somewhere. And in my class or my unit at the University of Delaware, we had 21 people. 

And three of us got married the same day because three of us had been planning to get married on the furlough. And it all got revved up. And the rest of the boys rented three or four taxis. 

And the first one of us got married in Newark, Delaware, and Lurleen and I got married in Wilmington, which was 12 miles away. And the third one got married back in Newark. And so we just had a Mary and a Saturday. A celebratory weekend. Everybody's running around. It got a little bit confusing because we had to get a Delaware marriage license. when we already had the Georgia marriage license. Oh, yeah. 

And the other two boys, one of them was from Pennsylvania and the other was from West Virginia, they had the same problem. 

So everybody was running around Delaware trying to get a marriage license. 

But we arranged it. And then you got shipped away. 

Well, we had a week left. 

And we all got married on a Saturday, and we were supposed to ship out the following Saturday, I guess. 

So we had a week left of school. And you can imagine there wasn't a whole lot of school going on. No. 

But we all, the three of us, found three rooms in three houses right next door to each other. About a mile from the campus. The campus. And that was your honeymoon, huh? 

That was the honeymoon. And then you got shipped to Colorado. Then went to Colorado. 

Did she get to come with you? 

Well, when I got out there, the division was already there, and there wasn't any place to live in Colorado Springs. It was filled up, and we looked fairly diligently. I bet you did. 

So I called, and I was going out there to find a place and so forth and so on. You couldn't find a place. 

Well, after we'd been there for about, you know, three months, I guess, I got a furlough and went back home for a week and went back to Colorado Springs. 

And along in there, they were getting ready to send the division overseas, so they put the word out that all the women and children go home. And so when the women and children went home, there was plenty of room. 

So I called early and I said, come on out here. We've got plenty of room. For how long? 

And she was out there a couple of three weeks. Oh, yeah. Not very long, though. Just a couple of three weeks. And then I went back to the post one day, one morning. And that's when they said, we're moving out tomorrow. And there'd be no more passes. 

So I called her and I told her, I'm done. It's all over. 

So I'm getting ready to go. And I can't get back to town. 

Well, then she had quite an experience. because then everybody had the same word of course and she goes down to the railroad station and she says that there's a there's a line of women and children four blocks long waiting to get on there's only one train a day and so finally the division commander got a got another old train in to get all these people away from there she had a first-class Pullman ticket which helped to get on the train and so she got on home all right so she went back to was it Macon or Tom she went back to Tomaston and you went off to fight the war yeah well then we heard that story and we came back you finally had enough points you came back to the States so my guess is you went to Tomaston right well no I went back to Macon oh you didn't go back to Tomaston no Lurleen moved over to Macon. Oh, you did have her move back to Macon. 

Well, during that time, while I was overseas, she was working in Atlanta. Oh, she actually moved into Atlanta. 

So she was living in Atlanta and was working at the Bell Bomber plant, which is now Lockheed. Right. 

And then she got a better job at the, Some outfit in Atlanta proper, not in Marietta, but in Atlanta, that made crystals for radio. And I've forgotten who it was. It was run by the fellow that ran it, was an old Georgia Tech man that grew up in Griffin, Georgia. and they made these little crystals to put in the in the in radio in the military radio and so she was doing that i guess for a year well i kept her pretty busy while you were gone well so then you went back to macon but did you uh did she move back to macon then or did you join up in atlanta or well no she was her thing had had played out because it needed more military radio so this was a year after the war was over this was eight or nine months after the war in japan was all well how did you make the decision to move to atlanta well we i wanted to go to school and i got in georgia tech lots of people wanted to go to school how are you lucky enough to get in well i i don't know it's i like to think it's because i was so smart and beautiful but i don't think good looking i think it might have been because my daddy pulled a string or two but It was good to know somebody in those days. School was jam-packed with everyone coming back from the war, right? 

Oh, yeah. There was lots of them. G. I. Bill was bringing folk left and right. 

Well, we had school at Tech. Classes started at 7 o'clock and ended at 7 o'clock at night. Unfortunately, I had a first class three days a week and a last class two days a week. 

So it was a long day, but it was worth it. It was different. 

You knew you were going back to what, civil engineering, or did you change your major? 

Yeah, civil engineering. You already had two whole years. I had two years, yeah. Did they give you credit for those two years, so you started as a junior? 

So you came back to... 

Well, it was even better than that because I got credit for all the electives because I was a commissioned officer. 

So I didn't have to take ROTC. 

So I got credit for that. And so I actually went to Tech for 15 months, five quarters. 

And that was your junior, senior year, rolled into that? 

Lurleen came up to live with you? 

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had an apartment. 

And could you live on the GI Bill and your benefits? 

So she had to get a job then? 

No, she already had gotten the job way back and had saved the money, but we had a baby. Oh, you didn't tell us that? 

Now, when did this baby come? 

Well, the baby came in June. 

And who was that? 

That was Mark III, who's wandering around out there somewhere, probably, and also graduated from Georgia Tech, as a matter of fact. 

Okay, but you're going to tell us about him a little bit. 

But we were... 

So you were a married man, a lot of responsibility, a child in addition to a wife. 

Well, the child didn't come until June. We started school in September. 

But everybody over there was... We had a class in calculus. It was theoretically a refresher course in calculus. And it was taught by a kid who was a Georgia Tech student and had been there the whole time. he was not old enough to have gone to war. And he was the youngest man in the class, the instructor. And he was very sensitive about that. And whenever anybody would ask a question, he'd give us a test. And, of course, that's been going on for, I don't know, six, seven weeks. And nobody would learn anything. And nobody was passing the test. and Wilhelm was his name I lost track of him but and finally two or three of us visited with Professor Wilhelm and told him says now we're not trying to embarrass you when we ask a question we're looking for an answer that's all we want to do is get out of here and and so when you just give us a test that does not help anybody and i said now maybe you you haven't thought of this but said you know if none of us pass this course we're going to be right back next quarter and uh your worst nightmare he finally got got the answer you know he figured oh maybe i better get rid of these clowns so we learned a little bit of calculus and but we had a uh as you say I think before the war, Tech might have had, what, 2,500 students? 

We had 6,000. It was a tremendous surprise. It was jammed in, and we had some pretty good professors. 

Some of them were real good, and some of them were like this kid who had just graduated himself the month before and couldn't understand why a grown man didn't understand about calculus you know because he'd had it two years ago but we had quite a time we had everybody was pretty focused on getting out well yeah it wasn't your typical collegiate experience did you have any social interaction on the campus at all or being married keep you away completely Oh, I joined the fraternity, and we enjoyed the fraternity the summer quarter, because it was not, now of course they had, the fraternity house had three feedings at lunch, and the fraternity was run by the kids, you know, the real college students, and most of us had been mess officers or company commanders or something else and we had very little interest in training a young man how to do something like that. All we wanted to do wasn't able to eat. We didn't want to train George how to manage the kitchen. And of course the kids did not enjoy the fraternity house, which was just like heaven to us. 

They wanted to go out someplace in Stone Mountain and drink beer sitting on beer kigs out in the woods. And we had had a lot of beer out in the woods already. And so we didn't participate a great deal in the social activities. At that end of it, yeah. Did you go to football games? 

Oh, yeah. Never missed one. 

So that was a social activity. Yeah. Oh, we had a lot of social activity. We used to play bridge in the lounge at the Civil Engineering Building. And some of the other veterans, we'd get together on the weekends and go somewhere. 

But as far as the fraternity part, it was a waste of money as much as anything else. Yeah, and you were way beyond all that, too. It wasn't as much fun as it should have been. Yeah, you've already been there, done that. 

But some of the instructors we had, now everybody in civil engineering had to take a public speaking course. And I guess they still do, I don't know. 

But we had a young fellow, he was the oldest we were, teaching it, named Comer. And he was an English major or something somewhere and did a good job. He welcomed us into the class. And, of course, back then, Colonel Van Leeu was the president. And Colonel Evans was the head of the Civil Engineering Department. And Colonel somebody else was the head of another department. 

And Comer says, now, gentlemen, he said, and, of course, we all went to school with our old Army uniforms on, because that's all we had. 

You know, not really, no brass and stuff like that, but pink pants and olive drab shirts and whatever. 

He says, now, gentlemen, it's become the custom around here to address everybody by their military rank. 

And he says, and I want you all to know right this minute, he says, the first one of you that calls me Corporal Comer loses the flux of course. And he was good. 

Cut it in perspective, didn't he? 

Then we had one old boy who was teaching the internal combustion engineering, and his class was 7 o 'clock in the morning. And he was just absolutely deaf as opposed. He was a retired Navy captain who must have been, back then, 70 years old. He was retired from the First War. He wasn't even in our war. 

But he couldn't hear a thing. and he would insist on writing on the board and facing the board and everybody would be back here and you had to hit him to get him to hear anything so finally nobody said anything. 

The fire truck drove up with the siren on and old Captain Bowman turns around and he says, Who did that? he thought it was somebody whistling in class it was fun some of it was fun oh yeah we had a good time did you make good friends oh yeah oh yeah so it was a place to to make friends and get yourself established um when did you know you what your life's career was going to be How did you decide from your civil engineering course which way you were going to go when graduation? 

Well, I had a boy who, a friend at VMI who was at this time was in Atlanta. He had a heart murmur and never went to the war. 

And so by the time the war was over, he had a real good job with Raymond Concrete Power Company, which was a New York contractor that did subcontracting work. and we were friends and used to get together on the weekends and all, his wife, my wife, and so forth. And so I applied for the Raymond Concrete File Cup. That's before you even graduated. Yeah. That's the time you're supposed to. Were jobs fairly plentiful? 

Or were there just an awful lot of people trying to get jobs? 

No, no. Pretty plentiful? 

Yeah. Do you remember your graduation? 

I didn't graduate. I mean, I finished the work. You didn't walk. 

But the graduation, I got through all the requirements in December. And December 47. 

So the exercise was in June of 48. Probably June of 48, yeah. 

So you didn't bother coming back for that. 

So we left. At that time, I was in, must have been in Detroit or something. You were already gainfully employed, as they say. Very much so. 

So you went right from finishing up at Tech to going to work. There was no interim period there. I went to, when did we get through before Christmas or after Christmas? 

Probably before. 

But anyway, I had Christmas at home. And the first week in January, I went to New York to interview with these people. and got the job while I was there because they knew I was coming. My buddy had set that up, came home, and took off for Biloxi, Mississippi. It was the first job I was on. Did you take your family with you? 

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We strode disposable diapers all up and down to Mississippi River. That's the way you remember it. We had, and of course it was still hard to find a place to live. And we stayed most of the time in motels. Really? 

Or in somebody's house. 

Was it really how you couldn't invest or find a house to settle into by yourself then? 

Well, no, we couldn't. 

Well, we weren't in any one place long enough. 

Oh, so your job involved you to move? 

We were just subcontractors, so all we were doing is driving piles. It might take three or four months, or it might take two weeks. Oh, I see. And so it was in and out. And then you would get another assignment and move to another place? 

Wow, that's a tough life. It is. And we did that for two years, and that was the end of it. I'm amazed you lasted that long. She must have been getting after you by then. 

Well, we were making money, though. Yeah. Which was a refreshing change of pace for you, right? 

It was indeed. It was indeed. 

See, the GI Bill, I got $90 a month while I was going to Tech, and that would pay the rent, buy a bottle of whiskey, and buy one basket and one sack of groceries. Yeah, right down to a science. And the rest of the month, we lived off of Luraleen Savings. 

Well, it's a good thing you married yourself a little saver, isn't it? 

Well, also, it had an incentive to let's get through with Georgia Tech. Get the degree and get the show on the road. 

So after the two years, you left there and did what? 

Well, I ended up back in Atlanta with Raymond. And we were driving piles for one of the additions on Grady Hospital. And so finally, I decided that this is enough of this. I mean, I'm buying a new car. I'm paying for a new car every two years and wearing it out, and we're right back where we started. 

So then I got a job with Atlanta Steel Erectors. in atlanta and i've been here ever since but you didn't stay with them very long how long did you stay i'll stay with them a couple years couple years got yourself established and then opened up my own general contracting business with uh well i had a partner he and i went in partnership for about, I guess, 18 months, and then he went one way and I went another way. Got yourself started, though. Oh, yeah. And you were a general contractor, so you were taking on commercial building sites yourself? 

Yeah. 

Not just doing pilings anymore, but the entire construction? 

No, no, doing everything, building the whole building. 

Well, with subcontractors, but the general contractor is responsible for the whole... 

Has to go out and find everybody to make the parts come together, right? 

It's kind of a tough racket, isn't it? 

Yeah. Of course, I retired about, oh, I don't know what, three or four years now. 

Well, you're skipping way ahead. There's a whole lot that happened in there. 

Well, you said it was tough, and if I had known how much fun Friday was without worrying about that big payroll, I might have quit 20 years ago. Could have done that sooner. 

But that also was a lot of fun. 

And there's a lot of tech people involved in the contracting business all over the country as far as that's concerned. 

But I mostly stayed in Atlanta and around. I did a job done at Jekyll Island and up in North Georgia two or three times. 

Now, what is a general contractor opening an office and say, OK, I'm willing to build this building for you, and your client comes to you with the plans already, the drawings? or how does that work? 

Well, the best thing to do is have the job before you open the office because the office costs a lot of money. 

Then how do they find you if you don't have an office? 

Well, when you first start off, most of your work is done on a bid basis. And see, they take bids on schools and churches and filling stations. Do you remember the first thing you built? 

Yeah. What? 

Tell me. The City Hall in Chamblee, Georgia. That was a pretty big undertaking for a first job. It was. A municipal building yet, working with the city. 

So you built City Hall in Chamblee, Georgia. 

Well, and attached to the City Hall was a fire station. And, of course, it was a DeKalb County fire station. And I was living in Chamblee. We had bought a house and lived in Chamblee. And when the thing came up to bid, we got the plans and bid on it and got to bid. And it worked out real good. You were in business. Yeah. 

So you had connections to find all the other subcontractors that you needed? 

No, not really. Maybe it's some word of mouth in there, but the subcontractors kind of look for you. Oh, I see. Once the word is out and it's posted that you've got the contract. 

Well, even before that. Everybody wants to be your friend and get the job. 

Well, see, the Atlanta Builders Exchange keeps plans, or used to, I don't know what they do now or not. 

If an architect has a plan, has a building he wants to take bids on, he will send a couple of sets of plans either to the Atlanta Builders Exchange back then or Dodge Reports. and then everybody can go in that plan room and look at those plans. 

And they also send a report out as to what plans they have and the bid date and the overall price and so forth. 

So you sign up for that and you get this report in every day. And sometimes they'd be 8, 10, 12 pages. Some of it would be of no interest to me whatsoever. I don't care about building it. a building in Birmingham or Memphis or something. 

So you can pick and choose where you want to be or what you want to do. Yeah, depending on how bad you need to do something. 

Well, I can imagine in the beginning, if you've got a young family, you needed to do something bad. I mean, you've only been working for four years, two years with one company, two years with another. You were ready to make some real money. Oh, yeah. 

So you had to buckle down and take a job, right? 

What are some of the other things you've built? 

Oh, I built, I guess I built 10 or 12 churches, relatively small churches, and all kinds of school buildings and school additions. And I built a bunch of shell filling stations, and they just seem to run in cycles at all. 

If your subcontractors are giving good prices on filling stations, then you can get a lot of filling stations. The word gets out. Yeah. 

Now, of course, back then, your average building was, well, a big building was a million dollars. And now a very small building is a million dollars. The big buildings are 20 to 40 million. 

But you always stuck to commercial buildings. You didn't ever go residential. No, I built my own house. I wanted to know that now. 

So you did build your own house. It's not quite finished yet. Only been building it for how long? 

Forty years. And it's not quite finished yet? 

There's always something new for it, huh? 

Oh, yeah. 

Well, Luraleen has a list. Keep up. And I found out that the quicker I finish the list, the quicker another list comes into being. 

So I might as well just learn to live with that first list. 

So you don't hurry into things. Take your time. 

So what kind of a life have you had in Atlanta? 

Oh, very enjoyable. Good life? 

Oh, yeah. Atlanta's a good town. We had a lot of real good friends. A large amount of them are Georgia Tech people, as a matter of fact. Mr. Smith, tell me about your family. Tell me more about them. 

Well, they're a good bunch, I think. I've got two children. Mark III graduated from Georgia Tech in 1965. He's the one that was born while I was at Tech. What's his degree in? 

His degree is Civil Engineering. Ah, so he did follow in your footsteps. More or less. 

Then he went astray, and after working for a couple of years with Bechtel company which is a big contractor and he was up in in new england with them and i asked him if he wanted to come back and go to work here and he did and then he he went to law school at night so he is now a practicing attorney that's where he went astray but you consider that going astray huh what school did he go to uh he went to the atlanta law school atlanta law school And so he practices law rather than be a contractor. Yeah. Wow. 

Well, he worked with me. We never did decide whether he was working for me or I was working for him. 

But he got to do more and more of his law business, and that's when I just closed up the construction company about three or four years ago. Oh, so this is kind of a recent development then. Oh, yeah. 

Well, no, he graduated from law school back, Lord knows how long, 20 years. 

But he was doing a little bit of law and a little bit of construction, and finally he started doing more law. Not a bad combination either. And he was a pretty good student. As a matter of fact, he passed the bar exam before he ever finished law school. That's pretty good. Some of them don't pass it after they finish law school. 

Well, he took it one time for experience, thinking that he wouldn't pass it. And he did. And he had another six months to go in law school because it was night school. And he passed the bar exam the first time he took it. Then he couldn't get admitted to the bar until he graduated from law school. 

But that was all taken care of. That's a wonderful claim. 

And he has a son named Allen who is now out in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working out there and doing fine. He's running a florist shop. 

So he has all the talent and artistic appreciations that the rest of us do not have. And my daughter went to the University of Georgia. And her name, please? 

Leela. Leela. Leela Dahl. And she married a fellow named **** Dahl, who was also going to the University of Georgia. And he graduated over there in agriculture. And they got married right after **** graduated and moved out. He went to work for DuPont in their agricultural department and lived out in Missouri. and Lela had not finished college so DuPont asked him when they hired him he's pretty smart for a Yankee by the way so when they hired him they asked him where he wanted they had three places to assign him and the kind of one of them in Kentucky and one of them I think was in Illinois and the one in Missouri and the one in Missouri had a college in the town so that's why he took that. And Leela went out there and graduated and finished her college work. Wonderful. 

Now they live in Rochester, New York. And this makes Lurleen and my wife very happy because they're so much closer than Kansas City. And we looked on a map and it's seven miles closer. Only a mother could make that claim, huh? 

Seven miles. It just seems closer. It seems more accessible. Soundbar. 

But Rochester's a nice town, and they've got... 

If you like snow. Yeah. It's beautiful in the summertime. Both weeks in the summertime. 

But they've got two children. The boy, **** Jr., is 15. And Angeline is 14. Wonderful. And they both play soccer and do various and sundry other things. And they come down to see us sometimes. And we get up there to see them. We see them about every three months, I guess. Do you? 

That's wonderful. 

So they know who you are while they're growing up. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. They had to love winter to live up there, though. 

Well, when they were moving from, **** had been with DuPont for five years, and he got his vested, and he decided to go back to work for his daddy. His daddy is a manufactured representative who lives in Buffalo. **** grew up in Buffalo. 

And so he went back up there to work with his daddy, and he lives in Rochester and does everything in the eastern part of New York State. 

And his daddy lives in Buffalo and takes care of the customers in the western part and part of Pennsylvania. And so ****, he told us they were going to move back. 

And I told him, I said, well, if you've got your five years in with DuPont In January, I said, why don't you go on up there and get to work? 

He said, well, we're not going to move until the 1st of May. He said, if we move up there now and it's snowing, he says, Lela might not get out of the car. And who would blame her? 

He wanted her to get used to it gradually. Yeah, they wanted to be nice when they got there. He is a smart man. Fortunately, the first year they were there, they had the warmest winter on record. Oh, so she got suckered into it. And she almost froze to death anyway. They do have really ***** winters up there. Oh, yeah. 

Well, just a couple of years ago. They live on a Lebmaker farm and they've got an eight-stall stable. And they've got a couple of horses, and they rent space to people with four other horses. And two hours ago, they had eight feet of snow drifted up against the barn. They couldn't get the door open. And they had to go in through the window, and the window is ten feet off the ground. Oh, my goodness. And, of course, they had to get in there every day to feed the horses. 

Now, that's not my idea of a good time. No. How about you? 

I don't want to have anything to do with that. 

You didn't volunteer to go out and do that kind of stuff, did you? 

What do you do with your time? 

Well, I play golf, and I do what my wife tells me to do. Which is very, very smart. Very smart. You like golf. You're also very involved with the Kiwanis. Oh, yes. For how long? 

Oh, I've been in Kiwanis since 1956, I guess. My daddy was the international president of Kiwanis. back when I was in high school, and of course I knew about it, and when I moved back to Atlanta and started work with Atlanta Steel Records, one of the Kiwanians in town decided I should join Kiwanis, and I did, and I've been very happy. 

I've enjoyed it, and in the period of time, and this, that, and the other, I got to be international president, so... How about that? 

That's a wonderful thing you carried on. Oh, yeah. 

This happened, well, in 1979-80, I was the national president, and Lurleen and I traveled all over the world. And that year, I spent 315 nights away from Atlanta. Wow, you really traveled all over the world. 

And the year before that happened is when I called Mark up in, he was up in Connecticut at the time, working with Bechtel and asking him if he wanted to come down here and go to work. Because you weren't going to be here. 

So he came down to do and help run the company. 

He took over the company for you while you did your running around, huh? 

It was a great experience, wasn't it? 

Oh, yeah. Yes, we enjoyed it. We met a lot of wonderful people and saw a lot of Georgia Tech people here, there, and yonder. Is that a good connection, Georgia Tech, for you? 

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Everybody knows about Georgia Tech. 

And I can remember way back when everybody knew what a good football team we had, but now mostly they talk about the academics. Which is as it should be. 

Now, there's nothing that says it can't be both, though, is there? 

Well, that's right. 

So we can always hope for both. That's right. Academically, there's no question that it's an academic football school. oh yeah it's a good school and football is always up for discussion well they're doing better definitely doing better and we're always optimistic that's the thing about yellow jackets right they see this there'll always be next year yeah there'll always be next year when i when i hear your story having just listened to your story it seems as though you've had a fairly fortunate life oh very fortunate you've been blessed absolutely there wouldn't be any reason for you to change anything would there well no I don't know that I'm smart enough to change it oh but if you could do you think you'd have gone back to to the West Point idea you think you would have had a very different life if you'd have stuck with that no I don't think it wouldn't have been the right one would it I don't think my wife could I don't think the army could have handled my wife the fist choice was made for her so no regrets really no no because we've had some hard bumps here there and yonder but that's what life is and surviving those things you seem to have survived in good stead thank you ma'am very good stead it's been a pleasure listening to your story and I thank you very much for sharing it with Georgia Tech today thank you ma'am good to see.