Former University of North Carolina and Team USA Head Basketball coach, and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner,
Dean Smith passed today.
Dean Smith dies at age of 83
Dean Smith, the coaching innovator who won two national championships at North Carolina, an Olympic gold medal in 1976 and induction into basketball's Hall of Fame more than a decade before he left the bench, has died. He was 83.
The retired coach died "peacefully" at his North Carolina home Saturday night, the school said in a statement Sunday from Smith's family. He was with his wife and five children.
Smith had health issues in recent years, with the family saying in 2010 he had a condition that was causing him to lose memory. He had kept a lower profile during that time. His wife, Linnea, accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom on his behalf from President Barack Obama in November 2013.
My personal reflections of Coach Smith are below the fold.
As a boy, one of my most vivid memories is watching the Carolina-Duke basketball game one Saturday afternoon in March. Carolina was down by 8 points with 17 seconds left. My father and I watched in awe as Coach Smith used timeouts and motivated his players to mount one of the most amazing comebacks in NCAA basketball history. I was hooked and became a Tarheel fan for life - eventually attending college there.
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As a student at UNC, I remember attending a preseason talk given by Coach to the student body in the Memorial Hall on Campus. As he was showing us videos of the season past, a person got up on the stage of the hall, and whispered something to Coach. Coach then looked out at the audience very sheepishly and said that even Head Basketball Coaches are not that special and can't park illegally on Campus - he had parked in a reserved spot and they had just towed his car. It is a wonderfully poignant memory that helped make him a person in my eyes.
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But Coach was more than a Coach. He was a liberal voice in a South that was undergoing radical change. As a boy he was a role model that taught me that my liberal values were not an aberration - that I did not have to subscribe to the racist, redneck norm of the area I lived in. That I was not alone. When I first read about his efforts to integrate a restaurant in Chapel Hill, and how he was one of the first coach's in the South to give a scholarship to a black athlete I was floored.
Dean Smith Challenged Chapel Hill's Old Prejudices
The North Carolina of the mid-1960s was a schizophrenic place caught in the middle of a country that was changing faster than the state wanted.
The Civil Rights Act had been signed. Segregation was outlawed, but old beliefs and prejudices were dying hard.
This was the North Carolina where Dean Smith worked. This was the North Carolina he helped change.
He fought for higher pay for domestic workers. He helped establish a settlement house in a low-income neighborhood. He brought his players into the neighborhood to play ball with the kids.
President Obama recognized Coach Smith's off the court life's work when he award Coach smith the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
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The tears are filling my eyes and soul. Yet I am also filled with a certain joy, knowing that a wonderful person has moved on, one who has has given both the world and me a special kind of light and understanding.
Godspeed Coach Smith.