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Staff photo by Nick Graham
Dwight Smith, 44, pictured on the field during a game in 1987, left, and at his Middletown home, right, Monday, Aug. 15, 2011, recently graduated from Ohio State University after taking over a 20-year break from his college education. Smith was standout football player at Middletown High School before attending Ohio State on a football scholarship. Smith decided to finish his degree at Ohio State and commuted, sometimes four days a week, to Columbus for classes.
Former Middie earns OSU degree more than 2 decades later
By Rick McCrabb, Columnist
Monday, August 15, 2011
MIDDLETOWN ? Dwight Smith, like all the blue-chip recruits at Ohio State, was a standout athlete in high school.
Still, Smith, a 1984 Middletown High School graduate, figured the transition from high school to college ball would be a sprint. He started for the Middies. He figured he?d start for the Buckeyes.
And when that didn?t happen his freshman year, he returned home on a weekend visit and told his mother he was done. He wanted to quit the team, and possibly transfer to another college.
His mother, Gwen Roberts, sacked that thought.
?I told him, ?You are not a quitter,?? Roberts said. ??Get back up there.??
He listened to his mother then ? and he listened more than 25 years later.
Smith earned three letters as a defensive back for the Bucks, but when he exhausted his eligibility, he left OSU a year shy of his degree.
He returned to the Middletown area, worked at Lebanon Correctional Institution, and some factories. He appeared destined for a career in manual labor.
Then he remembered what his mother told him.
Two years ago, Smith enrolled back at OSU, made the commute from Middletown to Columbus ? a 200-mile round trip ? four days a week, and this summer earned his bachelor?s degree in sociology, 27 years after starting at OSU.
?That,? he said, ?is the most important decision I?ve ever made.?
Cont...
http://www.middletownjournal.com/ne...degree-more-than-2-decades-later-1231116.html
