About Me

Hello and thank you for visiting. Yes, I really am John Smith, proud father and grandfather, retired mathematics and statistics professor, and recovering academic. My current position is that of unpaid sherpa spouse for my wonderful wife and partner in mischief, Sherry Smith. She paints and I carry stuff. Sherry, also a retired educator, taught kindergarten and first grade for 28 years before leaving the classroom to pursue her love of painting and exploring our natural world. We have been provided with the opportunity to travel much of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Ireland and Scotland. Solo trips related to my academic career have taken me to Hamburg, Germany and the cloud forests and Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Either Wales or New Mexico will be next.

Top left, sailing on Lake Superior, top right, a visit to our beloved Great Smoky Mountains, bottom right, hiking in Montana. Bottom left, our garden, a labor of love and source of beauty and frustration.

Navigating the School of Life

Prior to my fourth reentry into the academic world as a non-traditional student, my 1970s academic experience was that of a soccer player masquerading as a college student. This led to being a three-time college dropout, a national champion, and a professional soccer player. My professional soccer career lasted all of three days when the team quickly went bankrupt. That was in 1978, I am still waiting for the paycheck. At the end of the “pretending I was a student” period, the door to the academy was slammed firmly shut. Ready or not, it was time to enroll in the school of life. A not exhaustive list of life experiences included stints as a soccer player, soccer coach, construction worker, warehouse dock worker, forklift driver, dishwasher, cook, waiter, barback, bartender, bouncer, bar manager, bar owner, real estate agent, real estate appraiser, mortgage loan officer, and other things I can’t remember. These experiences have left me with many, mostly true stories. The most important of my many jobs during these seasons of life was that of a single parent raising a young son. This was an interesting time where along with my job as the owner and general manager of a neighborhood pub, I found time to serve as the “room mom” for my son’s first grade class. My son, Ryan, calls me on Mother’s Day and on Father’s day every year.

An Unlikely Academic

Decades later, after my son moved halfway across the country to play college football, I found myself an empty nester. It was soccer that gave me the chance to return to the academy as an assistant men’s and women’s’ coach. The job was only part time, but with tuition remission. I had jammed my foot back into the door of the Academy. I was a couple of months shy of my 50th birthday and the light bulb of the love of learning had finally switched on. My fourth attempt at higher education would eventually yield four degrees. More importantly, with credentials to join the teaching profession, I had finally found a calling, Not long after making the jump from the high school to the college classroom, I was admitted to the Theory and Practice of Teacher Education (TPTE) doctoral program at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville doctoral program at the age of 55. One of the professors told me that everyone he knew that started a doctoral program after the age of 50 was dead. I wondered if I should mention his pep talk needed some work. I survived and a mere seven years later, at age of 62, I became Doc Smith. Now eight years later, I am a retired professor, nearing completion of the Facilitator Preparation Program with the Center for Courage and Renewal, co-founded by Parker Palmer. I will be designing and facilitating retreats that create trustworthy safe spaces that allow our inner voices be heard. Retreat themes will include higher education and teaching, nature and conservation, healing division in a time of polarization, aging and elderhood, Click the workshop and retreat tab above for more information (coming soon)

Crann Seanathair (maybe Grandfather Tree in Irish)

So what’s next? It is my hope that this site will be a source of inspiration as I attempt to kick-start a third act as a writer, storyteller, retreat facilitator, sometime travel blogger, and inept gardener. I have to confess, Sherry usually does more than her share in the garden. I frequently rest, uh…I mean reflect, seated in the glider next to the large Sugar Maple in the center foreground of the bottom photo. Recently, I read Belden Lane’s wonderful book, The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul. He describes his conversations with “Grandfather”, an aging and scarred cottonwood tree in a public park near his home. After reading his book, I thought about how much time I was spending with this unnamed Southern Appalachian maple tree, I was inspired to give my grandfather tree a name. In a nod to my Celtic roots, and with the help of a google translator website, I have come up with Crann Seanathair as supposedly Gaelic or Irish for Grandfather tree. Since I have a healthy degree of skepticism for much, if not most, of the information found with Google searches, this may or may not be true, but it will have to do for now, or at least until I am corrected. Now I am wondering what name this tree has given me.