Civitan football coach wins Rotary Service Member of 2011

CLAYTON -- The darkened sky portended a stormy day, and the wind was blowing fiercely in the trees around the Clayton Civitan football field.

Nevertheless, Troy Smith walked his daughter Ashley down the center of the football field, and gave her away to be married.

The day was April 16, 2011, and the news that night read of a batch of tornadoes that had swept across North Carolina, leaving Raleigh and surrounding areas with $215 million in damage and death in its wake.

As the wind spelled disaster, the Clayton Civitan football program director and his cheerleading Civitan daughter braved the storm; if there's no lightning or thunder, the game must go on.

Smith gave his daughter away to be married in the presence of the whole Civitan family, bringing his commitment to the Civitan club full circle since he signed his six-year-old twins up for sports there in 1996.

"All the team dads were there," Smith said of the wedding. "The Civitan club is a great bunch. It's a great way to support and help out numerous (community) causes," Smith said.

As Rotary Club member and Clayton News-Star advertising director Stewart McLeod stood before the Town Hall chamber on the evening of Jan. 24 to present the Rotary Service Member of the Year Award, he told a story that made Smith turn red. Before that, Smith said, he was thinking that whoever was about to win the Rotary award for 2011 was a real stand-up fellow.

A Rotary member as well as a Civitan member, Smith had been told to come to the awards ceremony in order to present the Civitan award to Tony Stoneking.

However, another presenter was already there, and Smith's wife Judy Smith wouldn't let him leave as McLeod began to speak of a certain someone whose fellow Civitan dad's all yelled "I do!," when the minister asked who presented Ashley Smith to be married on the football field.

His first grandchild is due to be born to Ashley and her husband in May, and the ladies behind the Civitan Club have already presented Smith, the president elect for 2013, a "My First Civitan T-shirt."

The motto for the award is "service above self," and McLeod made sure to emphasize that as an active member of both Rotary and Civitan, it only made sense to name him the service member of the year.

In fact, former Rotary President Leigh Hudson said at a chamber banquet some years ago that Civitans are Clayton's hardest working civic club.

Growing up to serve

Smith grew up riding horses and showing them in the Future Farmers of America club in Maryland. At the tender age of 10, he met his wife Judy, a child as involved as he was in sports of all sorts.

The two have been together ever since, working in the community in Maryland -- Smith doing horse therapy with disabled children and helping in the Special Olympics since high school -- until they moved to Clayton in 1996, whereupon they immediately joined the Civitan club to get their children involved in the kinds of community activities that led them to meet each other.

When Smith was asked to be serve as the football director in 2001 -- a role he maintains to this day -- he decided to give back to the club that raised his children.

"My husband transferred here with Time Warner and we didn't know a soul," Judy Smith said. "The Civitans treated us like family from day one. Troy feels he does this because he wants to give back to the kids in the community what was given to his kids."

Smith had no intention of winning the award. He describes himself as a behind-the-scenes "do-er," not someone who stands in the limelight.

Now, as Rotary Service Member of 2011 and Clayton Civitan Club president-elect, Smith will have no choice but to step into the light.

But Smith seems to have overcome his background-man personality. He serves as chairman of the Civitan building and grounds committee, mentors high school students with senior projects, connects students to volunteer work in the community, and founded a flag football program for 4, 5 and 6-year-olds along with a little girl's pom-pom squad.

As president-elect, he has a host of plans for the Civitan Club and the Clayton community at large.

With 400 children in the football program - having grown from 250 since 2001 - Smith said he recognizes the need for more fields.

"We have the land, we just need to build it," he said, matter-of-factly emphasizing a goal to raise $1 million in funds for more fields, park space and a Special Olympics program to meet the growing youth population in the Clayton area.

And meeting that goal? It will only take the talents of the 2002 Civitan of the year, who just happens to be the 2011 Rotary Member of the year, too.