Utica's Will Smith on the verge of the NFL
After mom died, grandmother guided gridder on path of life
Originally published April 23, 2004

By Ron Moshier
Observer-Dispatch

Photo by MICHAEL DOHERTY Proctor defensive end Will Smith walks off the P & C Satdium field with teammate Jose T. Colon, during a break in the action of his teams Section III playoff game against Baldwinsville, Friday, Oct. 23, 1998. Smith was selected as the All-Mohawk Valley Player of the Year by the Observer-Dispatch.

Ever since losing his mother to breast cancer when he was 4 years old, Will Smith, the All-American football player from Utica, has been taking his grandmother’s words of wisdom to heart.

Why stop now?

Without Nancy Smith to lean on and learn from all these years, the Ohio State University senior knows he might not be who or what he is today — a projected Top 20 pick in Saturday afternoon’s National Football League draft whose best qualities can’t be measured in inches, pounds or seconds.

“It was difficult. I didn’t understand,” said Will Smith, whose mother, Lisa, was 27 when she died. “We always knew my mother was sick. We always thought it would go away. We never knew she had really gone until the funeral.

“But I was never without a mother figure. We were already staying at my grandmother’s and when my mother passed away she took over all the responsibilities; it wasn’t like there was nobody there for me.”

Nancy Smith, now a spirited 73-year-old New York City resident waging her own bout with cancer, has always been there for Will and his older sister, Chantay.

In 1991, she moved them from Queens to Utica when Will was 9 years old so they could be closer to their father, William Smith. And she made sure they knew right from wrong while growing up in a rough, tough South Street neighborhood where choosing the wrong path was almost too easy.

“I just followed my instincts,” said Nancy Smith, who years before had started raising her four children in the Brooklyn projects. “There were just so many things that kids could get into. I wanted to make sure they weren’t hanging out on the streets. That was a no-no.

“I used to tell them, ‘I’m not working anymore, so I’ve got nothing to do but stay up your butts,’” she said.

Her grandchildren say she was strict and old-fashioned in her ways, but that was just what they needed to survive and eventually thrive.

“Will was younger and it was a little harder for him to understand, so my grandmother took him under her wing and babied him,” said Chantay Smith, 24, who lives in Queens near her grandmother. “She knew the right things to do. She stayed on my behind and on his behind.

“It wasn’t like we went without anything. We just had a different life,” she said. “It wasn’t the best area. There were distractions. It would’ve been easy to turn to drugs or drug dealing, but that wasn’t an option. My grandmother wouldn’t allow it. She was very strict and Will listened to her more than I did. I was the rebellious one, but neither one of us was hanging around on the streets, and Will had an out. He was into sports and my grandmother supported anything that would keep him out of trouble.”

Sports and playing the trumpet worked for Will.

Basketball was his first love, but his friends persuaded him to try football when he was an eighth-grader at John F. Kennedy Junior High School.

After two years at the modified and junior varsity level, Smith played three varsity seasons at Thomas R. Proctor Senior High School, twice earning all-state honors before winning an NCAA scholarship and helping Ohio State capture a national championship in the second of his three seasons as a starting defensive end for the Buckeyes.

“You would never know Will had gone through such adversity because he was so well adjusted,” said Guy Puleo, the head coach of Smith’s JFK and Proctor teams. “You never got a call from a teacher or a counselor. You never had to deal with any disciplinary problems. ... That says a lot about his grandmother. She sat on him.

“I don’t know if that was in his nature, anyway, to be a follower. He was not going to follow people who were going to lead him the wrong way.”

Nancy Smith wouldn’t allow it, said Paul Filletti, his line coach at JFK and Proctor and a Utica police officer for more than 12 years.

“From what I could see, she wouldn’t let Will be a street kid,” said Filletti. “He had to get his homework done at a certain time. He had to practice the trumpet at a certain time. He wasn’t hanging out with his buddies.”

When he became a high school football star, Nancy Smith wanted to keep her grandson’s ego in check. Filletti and his other coaches helped her out there.

“One of them would say, ‘Yeah, we have to knock him down once in a while,’” recalled Nancy Smith. “And I would tell them, ‘Good, when you knock him down, step on him and tell him that’s from Grandma.’

A year ago, she helped Will decide to return to college instead of making himself draft eligible as a junior. Now, he plans to complete his degree in criminology by next spring, with hopes of becoming an FBI agent some day.

Getting that degree is important to Nancy Smith. So is Will keeping a level head, something he already has mastered..

“It doesn’t seem like you’re talking to the best or one of the best defensive ends in the country,” said Jon Bryant, a Proctor assistant coach who has become close friends with Smith. “He’s humble. He’s hard-working. He’s generous. He just has the qualities people like to be around. He’s a good person first and a great football player second.”

More than anything he’s done on the football field, his sister is most proud of how Will has handled the national spotlight, and dealt with the celebrity and million dollar dreams that come with being a first-round draft pick in the NFL.

“You’d think his head would be swollen by now,” said Chantay Smith. “He’s still a very warm, very humble, modest person. I still worry about it being too much pressure, too much stress on him, but he’s adjusted very well.

“He’s going to be successful and he’s going to graduate, so he’ll have something to fall back on. ... He’s proven even from the worst circumstances, you can overcome that and still do well.”

“As long as he doesn’t change,” warned Nancy Smith. “I’ve always told him we all can be replaced by a button, trust me; just push a button and it will do the same thing you can do without any back talk. I’m proud of him because in spite of all he’s done, he’s not full of himself. There’s not a big fuss. He’s not a big shot. It hasn’t gone to his head.”

Will Smith knows who to thank for that.

“I never had that mother-child relationship,” he said, “but we were very fortunate to have somebody who loved us and cared for us and wanted the best for us. My grandmother knew we were going to have hard times growing up without a mother and she tried to make it as normal of a family as possible.”

By all accounts, Nancy Smith did that, and more.

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