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Festival Author

Courage writ large

By PAUL JEROME
Published September 11, 2005

ON A ROLL:

Reflections from America's Wheelchair Dude

With the Winning Attitude

By Greg Smith

On A Roll Communications, $19.95, 280 pp

Reviewed by PAUL JEROME

When Hurricane Katrina swept the Mississippi coast last month, Greg Smith lost all the archival material from the nationally syndicated radio show that brought him fame. Swept away too were his custom van and power wheelchair.

But nothing can wash away the remarkable story of how he conquered great odds to become a successful broadcaster, motivational speaker and champion of the disabled.

"I am an expert on strength," writes Smith in On a Roll. "I don't have physical strength, but . . . pushing aside all the obstacles that I have faced makes me an expert on inner strength."

In On A Roll, a fast-paced, chatty memoir sprinkled with lessons of courage and perseverance, Smith recounts how he altered his thinking about the physical imperfections inflicted by muscular dystrophy that put him, a 65-pound teenager, in a wheelchair. With mind over matter, he boldly cut through the world of limitations and turned what many would have considered a pitiful existence into a series of successes for himself and for the disability movement.

Doctors inserted metal rods in Smith's back to straighten his curved spine when he turned 13, and from then on a wheelchair became his constant companion. But while the Mississippi native lacked physical ability, he developed a strong mental capacity - and a stubborn will.

Despite his puny presence, Smith got school administrators to accommodate him so he could play drums in his high school band. He became the basketball team manager and later the announcer for the school's football games, a job that sealed his path to broadcasting.

When he attended Arizona State, he persuaded the college station to create a sports director position, a job that he eventually parlayed into a syndicated weekly radio show that spotlighted the concerns of people with disabilities. He started the show, On a Roll, at a small station in Phoenix and for a while worked on it out of an apartment in Temple Terrace before moving to Ocean Springs, Miss. At the height of its popularity, the show was broadcast via satellite to 33 stations.

Along the way to fame, Smith had to grapple with his minority identity on two fronts - as a disabled person and as a black man. Spending much of his early years in mainly white society, he often was the lone black and the sole disabled person in his surroundings. In college, he began to seek out African-American friends and pledged with a black fraternity. Later, a frustrating job in radio sales promotion prompted him to start capitalizing on his disabled experience.

Along the way, Smith also dealt with divorce and fatherhood. In frank fashion, On a Roll describes his tumultuous marriage to a woman with whom he fathered three children.

After almost a dozen years of doing his radio show, Smith chose to reinvent himself. He changed the name of the show, now syndicated in 35 markets, to The Strength Coach and became a motivational speaker.

That 65-pound teenager who described himself as a "hip crip" now calls himself "a little guy with a big message."

- Times staffer Paul Jerome is editor of FlaVour magazine.

[Last modified September 9, 2005, 11:45:03]