A passion for prose

Mar 06, 2009 (The Charleston Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- UK | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- In high school and college, he focused on basketball. A standout at Virginia Tech, he was selected for the NBA draft. He chose a career in chemical engineering.

In midlife, he climbed Union Carbide's corporate ladder. Promotions and transfers took him to Texas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and, finally, back to West Virginia.

After retirement in 1994, he served four years on the Charleston City Council, five years as business manager for Kanawha County Schools and four years as city treasurer. In 2002, he ran for mayor and lost in the general election.

In the golden years of his ever-evolving life, he's developing a new identity:

The basketball star. The chemical engineer. The civic servant. And now, Chris Smith, the writer.

"I always wanted to write," he said, "but I've always written technical stuff, policy manuals and things like that. I like writing about facts and true things, but I like to deviate and add color, some humor and anecdotes. I couldn't do that as an engineer."

In 1999, during some down time as city treasurer, he started writing. Nothing formal, just handwritten entries on 8 1/2-by-11-inch tablets. "I started with the first thing I remember as a child and went on up to the present. I ended up with a pile of papers about 3-feet high."

His technology-savvy children, mystified by

the handwritten manuscripts, bought him a computer for Christmas. "By the end of 2000, I had 3,000 typed pages. I wondered what I was going to do with all that. It was still just a bunch of stuff."

Eventually, he decided he had enough material for at least three books. He's written four. So far.

The first, "It's More Than Just Winning," chronicles his basketball exploits at Charleston High School and Virginia Tech. He wrote "The Building of Moosemont" about the 8,200-square-foot home he personally built with his wife, Sandy, a project that took 10 years. He wrote "Dad, the Honest Scrap, and Me," a memoir about the first 19 years of his life.

And he wrote the newly published "From the Shenandoah to the Kanawha," a detailed history of his family, beginning with Col. John Smith, an Irish immigrant and a hero of the French and Indian War.

More than 500 pages long and nearly 2 inches thick, the genealogy saga started with just the story of Col. Smith, he said. Increasingly curious about Smith's descendants, though, he decided to follow them to the Kanawha Valley.

"My wife had traced her family back 12 generations and heard that a grandfather was one of the original Jamestown immigrants. I went with her to courthouses and libraries as she did what she needed to do to qualify for the Jamestown Society. So I started doing some research, too."

He managed to trace 256 direct grandparents.

Energized by his growing passion, he worked tirelessly on all four books simultaneously. "I would work 15 hours a day -- but anything that you do that you enjoy is not a job."

He invested in elaborate software to self-publish his work and created a Web site. The basketball book and the family history are already in book form, he said, and he's ready to publish the other two.

The family history reads like a virtual who's who of old-line Charleston families, an encyclopedia of Kanawha Valley shakers and movers. The book brims with familiar names that shaped the city -- MacCorkle, Goshorn, Alexander, Noyes, Chilton, Shrewsbury -- all connected to Smith on one side of his family or the other.

His father was Issac Noyes Smith III, paternal grandson of a Quarrier and the great-great-grandson of a Noyes. His mother was Eliza Daggett MacCorkle. Her mother was married to the son of Gov. William A. MacCorkle.

"Margaret Alexander Lyle MacCorkle had beautiful reddish strawberry blonde hair along with greenish colored eyes that stopped William Goshorn MacCorkle in his tracks," Smith wrote in his book. The governor hosted the wedding reception on the lawn at "Sunrise," his hilltop mansion. "They had their first child, Eliza Daggett MacCorkle, on Dec. 16, 1906."

Gov. MacCorkle built his son and daughter-in-law a home, "Torquilstone," across Myrtle Road from Sunrise. Smith acknowledges in the book that he once danced on top of the 14-foot Robin Hood grandfather clock that stood in the turn of the stairwell.

He discovered during his research that he and his wife are seventh cousins, once removed. He also found that they are both related to the great-great-grandparents of Abraham Lincoln. "It was fun to discover that Abraham Lincoln is Sandy's third cousin, five times removed, and my third cousin, four times removed."

Another relative is Cynthia Morris Noyes, the first white woman born west of the Allegheny Mountains.

"Everybody has similar stories in their background," he said. "What's fun is finding them. Most people just don't have the desire to do it."

The first section of the book traces the life of Col. Smith from 1701 to 1783, including his exploits in the French and Indian War, when he was captured by 200 Shawnee Indians. "It would make a great movie," Smith said. "They burned his namesake son to death and forced him to watch."

Information he'd gathered while living in Indian villages and French forts later contributed to a masterful attack plan that greatly influenced the English victory, Smith said. "He did as much as any American to win that war."

The second half of the book chronicles the history of Col. Smith's direct descendants. The third section concentrates on modern-day connections by starting with today's generation and tracing their roots to Col. Smith's generation, three centuries ago.

Family portraits and pictures of historic family homes, many familiar to Charlestonians, finish the book.

Smith will sign copies of his book from noon to 2 p.m. Thursday at Taylor Books, 226 Capitol St.

For additional information, check the Web site, chrissmithpublishing.com.

Reach Sandy Wells at 304-348-5173 or sandyw@wvgazette.com.

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