Donn Lowell Smith (1911-2001) - 52 Ancestors

This is week 2 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. The prompt for this week is "Favorite Photo".  The first thing that came to my mind as I thought about the prompt was cars. I like antique cars and enjoy going to car shows to see both old and new/concept cars. With that in mind, I started looking through all of my photos of relatives and their cars and settled on Donn Smith, the husband of my grand-aunt Veronica "Verona" Josephine Wise (1912-2009). Donn was a car salesman, so there are probably lots of photos of him with cars. He isn't the only car salesman in my family and my wife also has car salesmen in her family. 

Don Smith (age 16) with Ford Model A

Donn Smith was born on 18 February 1911 near Rossburg, Darke County, Ohio. His parents were Walter Tecumseh and Maud Felkley Smith. The family had a farm a mile and a half south of Rossburg but in April 1912, Walter sold his farm and moved to Rossburg where he bought a hotel, restaurant, and horse livery. He began using one of the first automobiles in his livery business and in 1913, the same year that Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line, Walter started his auto business selling Fords. In 1917, the Ford dealership was moved from the frame building to a brick garage. In 1926, Smith switched his dealership to sell Chevrolets and expanded to larger quarters in 1931. In 1951 they had to expand to larger quarters again and moved across the street from their original dealership. By that time, they had 12 employees, including Donn Smith who was the General Manager. The dealership was selling between 500 and 600 cars each year. That is something for a town of only 200 residents. As you can see, Donn was raised around automobiles from an early age and it was in his blood.

1954 pace cars Eldora Speedway

In 1954, Earl Baltes, a prominent local bandleader opened the Eldora Speedway, a 1/4-mile dirt racetrack near Rossburg. This track became known as "The World's Greatest Dirt Track" and eventually expanded to a 1/2-mile track in 1958. It is likely that Donn Smith and Earl Baltes knew each other through their interests in music, both of them were band leaders and often performed in the same venues. This joint interest in music and automobiles likely led to opportunities for Donn. For example, there is a picture from 1954, the first year for Eldora Speedway, where Donn Smith and Jim Steinle were the pace car drivers, driving a 1953 Corvette and a 1954 Jaguar.

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