Michael Smith

Mr. Michael Harold Smith, 83, of Concord, passed away on Thursday, February 9, 2023 at his home, with his family at his bedside, seven months to the day after being diagnosed with a brain tumor that was later identified as a glioblastoma.

Michael was born on July 16, 1939 in “The Big House”, the great Smith family abode in Austell, GA, to the late Rosalyn Wood Collins Smith and William Edward Smith. He was the middle of five children and of three sons and grew up in a chaotic but strangely secure home full of aunts, uncles, and cousins close and distant. Michael was a “mischievous” child, which led the police to warn his mother one Halloween afternoon, “If you don’t keep him in, we’ll take him in.” He excelled at sports, despite being one of the smallest kids in his class and having had a mild case of polio as a child, which illness left him with one leg slightly shorter than the other.

In his early teens, following his father, his older brother, and several cousins, he matriculated to The Marist College High School (now Marist School), at the time a private catholic boys’ military high school in downtown Atlanta. There he played football, baseball, and dived. He and several cousins credit his experience at Marist with changing the direction of his life by exposing him to a wider world than the small southern railroad town he grew up in. He graduated in 1958 and refused ever to wear wool again.

During a double date at Adams Park in southwest Atlanta, he, a lettered halfback for Marist’s football team, met Beryl Barron, a cheerleader for Russell (now Tri-Cities) High School in East Point, GA. She had not been his original choice for that date and she didn’t like him at first, but they soon got to the point where Beryl’s mother complained that they “would stay on the phone for an hour listening to each other breathe.” They married in East Point in December 1959 and moved into a one-bedroom lakeside cabin belonging to his aunt Susie on Smith Hill Road in Austell. Their first child, a son, was born the day before Beryl’s 21st birthday.

Michael worked loading and sweeping at Southern Latex in Austell, a position that he found through his cousin Spencer, who hired him with the words, “If I see you sitting down, you’re fired.” Soon after he began, the lab supervisor walked onto the dock and asked whether anyone would like to work in the laboratory. Quickly deciding that lab work offered more possibilities than loading and sweeping, Michael accepted. In the laboratory, he soon showed that he had a knack for chemistry and problem solving. The general direction of a career had become clear.

Southern Latex had a problem at a major client in Dillon, SC. Since Michael had some experience with the chemistry, they asked him to go there despite being unfamiliar with the mill or the people there. Later, he remarked that he simply thought about the problem and made his best educated guess about a solution. But all the client saw was a very young chemist who had rushed to their plant and solved a serious problem for them. The client sent word. “If you want our business, we want him in North Carolina.” A few days later, Michael came home to the cabin and told Beryl that he’d been offered a position in North Carolina and that he thought he was going to take it.

In December 1962, Michael and Beryl left the Atlanta area, a large and interesting place for its time where their families had lived for generations, and set off for Concord, NC, a town of 17,000 where Michael knew only a few co-workers. He was 23 years old. She was 22 and 6 months pregnant with their second child. Their 18-month-old son was in the back seat. The new Interstate ended just outside Atlanta. From there they took US 29 through countless small towns and, after driving all day, they came at last into Concord. It was cold and raining. As they drove through the industrial west side of town, over the tracks and past mill after mill, Beryl began to cry, wondering what a future there might look like.

Michael worked in technical sales and service for Southern Latex in Concord for about 15 years. He travelled extensively and there was no mill in any small town in the Carolinas, Virginia, or Georgia that he did not know. By 1978, however, Southern Latex had been bought and Michael concluded that he wasn’t ever going to advance further in the company. So he joined an old business acquaintance who had created his own company a few years before. It seemed like a cause for celebration. Only a few months later, however, his business partner died, and Michael found himself in charge of the entire company. He had a wife and three children to support, the oldest of which had just begun college out of state.
His knack for chemistry and problem-solving proved more necessary than ever as he spent the following years digging the company out of its precarious financial state and changing its business strategy from low cost to high service. Eventually he renamed the company “Chem-Tex Laboratories” and managed it through good economies and bad, and through the collapse of most sectors of the textiles and apparel industries in the Southeast, proving stable employment to dozens of others, including his daughters Collette and Kristy. He finally sold Chem-Tex in 2017 to HeiQ Materials AG, a Swiss textiles firm, and eased out of the presidency in 2022.

Michael, like his parents and siblings, was a fan of all Atlanta and Georgia Tech sports but his lifelong sports hobby was golf, which he enjoyed with Beryl, his many golfing friends, and his grandson Joshua. In the early 1970s he began playing in the annual post-Masters charity Heritage Pro-Am tournament at Hilton Head and his office walls were full of plaques of the foursomes and professionals he had played with. As of 2022, he had played in the tournament more times than any other person.
His work and golf were certainly his hobbies but, for the last decades of his life, the activity into which he poured his heart was being “papaw” to his grandchildren. He was a constant, reliable, inexhaustible source of unconditional love and support to each of them. Their every pain was his pain, and their every joy lifted his heart as well. Even in his last days, he never quit thinking of how he could help them.
Michael was preceded in death by sisters Janet Cardell and Sue Frankforther, and by brothers William “Bubba” Smith and Jere Smith. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Beryl Leah Barron Smith; son, Michael Alan Smith of Atlanta; daughters, Collette Smith Martin and husband Wayne and Kristy Smith Mason and husband Scott “Nate”, all of Concord; grandchildren, Joshua Mark Solomon of Harrisburg, NC; Chase Michael Solomon and wife, Kaite of Concord; Leah Marie DiGeronimo and husband Alex of Charleston, SC; Marcus Lynn Mason of Concord; Michael Scott Mason and wife Becca of Concord; and step-grandson Michael Martin of Columbia, SC.

The family thanks the caregivers of Hospice and Palliative Care – Charlotte Region, and of Home Instead, especially Melannie, who cared for him throughout his last day; friend Stacy, who stayed with Michael during the nights of his last weeks and whose practical experience and “lasagna not lasagna” were a great help; longtime friends Jim and Linda Lynch for the emotional support, help with transportation, and all the delicious home-cooked meals; and the doctors and nurses of Atrium Health and the Levine Cancer Institute in Concord and Charlotte, and of the Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, NC.

A celebration of the life of Michael Harold Smith will be held in late March.