The 3 lives of Jimmy Smith: Life, in decline after the NFL, saved by faith

“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.”

— From the Christian hymn by American poet and clergyman John Newton.

The Kankakee County area has seen great athletes. Some were born here. Others have passed through.

The area has been home to a World Series Most Valuable Player, Ben Zobrist; a National Basketball Association champion, Jack Sikma; and an Olympic miler, Joie Ray.

And yet this man may have been the most-gifted athlete here ever. He wears an NFL alumni ring on the left pinky of a pair of strong hands.

His name is Jimmy Smith, a tailback from the once-mighty Kankakee Westview High School, a faded name from the time more than 40 years ago when the public school district had two high schools.

Jimmy Smith was a Kayhawk. A blue and gold high school letter hangs on the wall of the church he pastors, We Stand for Christ Jesus Ministries, 1230 S. East Ave., Kankakee.

The same walls include a rosary and a version of “The Last Supper” with Christ and the Apostles.

In 1979, the Chicago Sun-Times called Smith “perhaps the most exciting running back Illinois has produced since Red Grange.”

Ted Petersen, of Momence, who earned two Super Bowl rings as an offensive lineman with the Pittsburgh Steelers of the “Steel Curtain” era, said Smith “was the best football player, bar none, who has come out of Kankakee.”

Smith has had three lives; two more than most of us. As a youth and young man, he was an athlete of great promise, with seemingly limitless rewards ahead. As an adult, he was ravaged by drugs. As an older man, now 63, he has been redeemed by faith.

NOWHERE TO GO BUT UP

The common cliché is to say someone grew up poor, but didn’t know they were poor.

That statement wasn’t true in the Smith family.

They were poor, and they knew it. Smith’s mom, Melba, was eventually the mother of eight. His mother had been abandoned as an infant. She was an early teen mother. Melba passed in 2019, dying of lung cancer.

Jimmy, second in the birth order, was born when his mom was only 13. As a child, his father was not in his life. He connected with dad, Moses Moore Duffy, as a teen.

“I loved my dad,” he said.

The Smith children, Jimmy explained, were helped by Thomas Branch and Marie Pankey. Branch was, Smith said, well known on the north side of Kankakee. He gambled and shared his winnings with his community. That link severed, when Branch, an unofficial granddad, passed when Smith was 14.

His mom and the family lived, he said, “in a shack” on Dearborn Avenue in Kankakee. Smith was a popular and outgoing student in high school, but, he said, he never brought anyone to his home because he was ashamed.

Jimmy Smith likens the home he grew up in to the ramshackle junkyard one might remember from the television show “Sanford and Son.”

The Kankakee County Housing Authority deemed the Smith home “unfit for human habitation.” Local pharmacist Fred Jaffe made the contact that resulted in the Smiths moving to public housing on North Rosewood Avenue in Kankakee.

Smith once described Fred Jaffe, as a “friend, a brother and a father to me.”

Years later, when Smith turned pro, Jaffe would be his first agent.

Kankakee Coaches Joe Rockett and Bill Farley were also instrumental in Smith’s youth. They also were, he said, father figures.

Smith remembers Farley asking him what was wrong. There was, Smith said, “no food at home.” So the young man was driven over to Thrift-T-Mart and given groceries. Farley remembers that it could not have been more than a bag, because the coach then was just beginning his own career as a young teacher.

Smith was thankful, though, and also felt like a “big man,” he said, for bringing food home for his siblings.

Jimmy was also treated to ice cream cones, as long as he didn’t skip school. Smith remembers Westview High School English teacher Viester Wells staying after school for all four years to keep working with him on his studies.

He needed to stay in school because he was blessed with incredible football talent. He was muscular, 185-190 pounds, and fast. He was also gifted with good hands. He could catch a pass and was superb at running back punts and kickoffs.

“I knew I was good,” Smith said.

He would run on city streets in the rain to build toughness. He would run along Illinois Central rails to gain balance. A track, as well as a football star, he was twice the state high school champion at 220 yards.

Farley said Smith was so accomplished as a runner that his main role as a track coach was to give him the lane assignment.

“He was superior,” Farley said.

Farley explained that people didn’t realize how hard Jimmy worked as a youth. He would play in the sophomore football game on Friday nights, even though he was a freshman. Then on Saturday mornings he would play both offense and defense on the freshmen team.

“I didn’t know how to accept failure,” Smith said.

He describes himself as the fastest player on his teams. Jimmy knew he had talent and in a high school interview he was wise enough to say that football was “the only chance for me to get out of this environment.”

Coach Rockett, he said, took Jimmy’s ability to the next level by teaching him how to run with power. He could elude tacklers and also punish one who might have the angle on him.

Rockett had been a great high school running back himself. His protégé, Jimmy Smith, eclipsed all his records. Rockett teased him, though, with the anecdote that when he, Rockett, set the single-game record for yardage, he did it in one half. Smith took an entire game.

A member of the 1979 Class at Westview, Smith was regarded as a high school All American his sophomore, junior and senior years. He ran for 1,617 yards as a senior and was clocked at 9.8 in the 100.

Jeff Bennett, of McColly Bennett Real Estate, remembers sitting in the stands at Westview and watching Smith score six touchdowns against Rich Central.

Along with Eric Dickerson, now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and Stanley Wilson, who went on to an NFL career with the Cincinnati Bengals, Smith was rated as one of the top three high school running backs his senior year in the nation.

He got 250 scholarship offers. Coach Barry Switzer, who had already won two national collegiate championships at the University of Oklahoma, came to the Smith living room to recruit Jimmy.

A great running back, he wound up, of all places, at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., which had a reputation, even then, as the passing team and the Cradle of Quarterbacks.

Three Boilermaker quarterbacks, Drew Brees, Len Dawson and Bob Griese, have Super Bowl rings. The Purdue quarterback in the Jimmy Smith years was Mark Herrmann, not well known now, but an All American then.

Purdue had a number of advantages. It is only 85 miles from Kankakee. Jimmy Smith was in love and married at 18. He wanted to help his wife become an X-ray technician. His mom was important, too.

Purdue football was also in an “up” cycle. Ohio State, Michigan and today, Penn State, will always be powerhouses. Purdue is a school that can compete when the right athletes and right coaches intersect. In Smith’s freshman year, Purdue won 10 games. It had never won more in a single season. It has never won that many in all the seasons since then, either.

And Purdue needed him. Purdue coach Jim Young called Smith the best running back he had ever recruited. He would play as a freshman, the first true freshman to start at Purdue in 27 years, he remembers. In his first game, against Wisconsin, he scored one touchdown and set up a second with a long kickoff return.

In November of 1980, his sophomore season, he was named Midwest Player of the Week for scoring four touchdowns against Northwestern. He scored 18 touchdowns overall in his sophomore and junior seasons. He led the Boilermakers in rushing in those years and rose to second team Big Ten.

THE UNFULFILLED PROMISE

He had moments then when he was the star everyone expected. He had moments when he appeared to be overlooked. Against UCLA in his sophomore season, Coach Young held him out of the entire game. No explanation to either Smith or to a baffled press.

He was doing “OK” in the classroom, Smith said. He even sat out part of his freshman season at Purdue to concentrate on academics.

But by his senior year he was academically ineligible to play at Purdue, short of credits, despite going to summer school. So he spent his senior collegiate year at Elon College in North Carolina.

Elon was then a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics school. NAIA schools compete in athletics, but they are smaller schools. Today’s Olivet Nazarene University plays at the NAIA level.

Nonetheless, Elon seemed to be a positive experience for Jimmy in two ways. He hit the weight room and upped his bench press beyond 400 pounds. He also improved his blocking technique.

Small school or no, Jimmy Smith was taken in the NFL draft. At the combine, a series of tryouts where potential players face a variety of physical challenges, Smith logged the fastest time, 4.3 seconds, in the 40-yard dash. He was picked 102nd and was the 10th running back selected.

He would have gone a lot higher, he said, if he had been able to stay at Purdue with the advantage of Big Ten history and media coverage.

Still, he made the roster of the Washington Redskins, now renamed as the Commanders. He had 12 carries for 64 yards and caught two passes against the Denver Broncos. He ran 101 yards with a kickoff for a touchdown against the powerful Los Angeles Raiders.

But Smith was buried on the running back depth chart behind John Riggins, the “Diesel,” an eventual NFL Hall of Famer, and Joe Washington, a two-time All American, who ironically starred for the University of Oklahoma.

Jimmy moved from team to team. At times Smith was a Seahawk, then a Packer, and then a Raider.

There Marcus Allen, another Hall of Famer, was ahead of him. The Raiders were a franchise under Al Davis, that always liked speed. They toyed with the idea of turning Jimmy into a wide receiver, but nothing came of it. Smith sat out a year, then got a cup of coffee, three games with the Minnesota Vikings, in 1987.

In a 1991 Journal interview he said the failure to get as much playing time as he hoped or to do as well as he envisioned left him depressed. Whatever he was paid was spent. There were no savings from football.

His was a career of “what ifs?” At all levels, he had talent, but never quite the opportunity once he left Kankakee. If he had chosen a school that featured running backs. If he had stayed his senior year at Purdue. If he had wound up on an NFL team that truly needed him.

In one sense, Jimmy had a lot of chances in college and the pros, but he never had the chance that mattered. He was never the featured back in an offense that stressed the run. If he had been given the ball a dozen or more times every game on pitchouts and screen passes, the trajectory of his life might have been different.

THE DESCENT

“I never thought I would love anything more than football,” Smith said.

But drugs gripped him.

It started when he was 25 and playing in Los Angeles. He was young, in a big city and had money. Notably, there was cocaine, but also meth, alcohol, marijuana and later, even heroin.

The drugs sapped away his desire to practice and workout.

“I could have been great, but I medicated my talent away.”

His marriage had also dissolved. He realizes now that at 18 he was not ready to be a husband. He would ultimately be married three times.

At home, in those high school years, he was financially poor, but rich in having a support system. There were coaches and teachers who helped. Outside of Kankakee he was, at times, tragically alone, especially bedazzled by the bright lights of California nightlife.

By 1989, he was homeless in Los Angeles.

In 1990, he “came home” to Minnesota to be closer to his mom and brothers, but wound up living on the street. He would get his welfare check, $200, and spend it all on dope. He picked through the garbage cans at Kentucky Fried Chicken to eat.

He would, he said, go door-to-door with the old scam of collecting money for his mother’s funeral. His mother was alive at the time. He would occasionally be caught. “I know your mom,” they would say. “She’s fine.”

There’s the old joke that quitting smoking is easy. It’s done quite often.

Smith had the same experience with drugs. Seven times he was in some form of treatment or counseling. Seven times it failed.

The nadir came one night in the Twin Cities in the summer of 1991. He was hauled into the home of a drug dealer. Smith owed money and was severely beaten.

A black plastic bag was pulled over his head. Kicked and punched and stabbed, he survived because he was able to scrape a hole in the plastic, using the rough surface of the basement floor. Smith curled into the fetal position.

“Is he dead yet?” he remembers one of his torturers asking.

Smith prayed: “Jesus, don’t let me die like this.”

Then he said he heard the voice of Jesus: “Father, spare this one. I can use this one.”

At the moment when Jimmy Smith might have passed from this world, the Minneapolis Police raided the drug house. “Boom. Boom. Boom,” as the battering ram broke down the door.

The cops put ice in his mouth. He was placed on a gurney and visualized himself floating into the sky. He thought he was in a helicopter. Eventually he learned he had been in an ambulance.

He woke up three days later. His life had been spared. Emergency surgery played a role. That hole in the bag that might have smothered him was critical. His past physical condition helped. His tucked-in fetal position slowed the flow of blood. Doctors told him he had been 15 minutes away from bleeding out.

Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was the Lord.

If the police had chosen any other night for their raid, Smith would be dead today.

But Smith’s close brush with death did not immediately break his addictions. He went to Mississippi and got “churched.” He embarked on a new career as a teacher and coach. It was not entirely successful. He would lecture youths on the evils of using. It was an uneasy hypocrisy. He was telling youths not to use, but was using himself.

He would, he said, stay clean for six months, then start using again. His mom would ask him, “Why do you keep messing up?”

By age 38, he explained, he had a record of three felonies in Minnesota. He forged checks to get money for drugs. He hustled on the street. His last conviction was the result of a sting. For $5, a single Abraham Lincoln, he gave a tip to an undercover cop who was asking for a prostitute.

“I got to change,” he told himself.

FAST FORWARD

Real change started in 2009.

During a Thanksgiving visit to Kankakee, he crossed paths with the L’SOM Ministries. They had a bed and room for him at their center, “when he was ready.”

It wasn’t easy to come back to Kankakee.

“I was embarrassed and ashamed,” he said.

He felt like a “dog with its tail between his legs.” They sent a bus ticket from Minneapolis to Kankakee to him. He acknowledged that was a risk. The old Jimmy Smith might have turned it into cash for dope.

“I had messed up everything,” he said. “God had spared me. Why had He saved me?”

His brother Thomas Smith Jr. played a positive role, “pouring” into Jimmy that he had unfinished business in Kankakee.

"He predicted I would teach God’s word," Jimmy said. Thomas died in 2017. Jimmy has his brother’s minister’s robe.

The new Jimmy Smith came home on March 8, 2009. He took up simple jobs to earn his keep at the ministry. The arms and legs once used to evade tacklers now shoveled snow.

Jimmy Smith has now been clean for 15 years.

AMAZING GRACE

Ed Kannapel was a Vietnam veteran with three Purple Hearts who was the founder and the moving spirit behind the Gift of God Street Church in Kankakee. Kannapel died from cancer on July 10, 2021.

Before he passed, Smith visited Kannapel in hospice care.

“Jimmy, I’m dying,” Kannapel told him, according to Smith’s account. “I need your help.”

The Lord, Smith said Kannapel told him, wanted him (Smith) to minister to the “homeless, helpless and hopeless” in Kankakee County.

“I’ve been all three,” Smith said.

These days, Smith ministers at the nondenominational We Stand for Christ Jesus Ministries, now in its third year. The colorful building, across the street from the Shapiro Developmental Center, is a Kankakee landmark, known for years as the longstanding Homestead Restaurant.

Jeff Bennett, a longtime Kankakee County Realtor and girls' high school basketball coach, said Smith traveled to a ministry in Harvey to see how it operated. He came back to Kankakee looking for space and found the Homestead. Bennett has seen him transform the old restaurant.

An anonymous donor with a long history of philanthropy was key to the location and continues to aid the ministry. That family believes in the mission of battling drug and alcohol abuse.

They also believe in Jimmy.

Smith closed on the structure on Nov. 5, 2020.

Smith has married again. His third marriage, to Darice R. Smith, has worked. The couple will celebrate 12 years on May 24.

“I didn’t know how to handle marriage before,” he said. “Today I got it right. I am the happiest I have ever been in my life.”

He’s reconciled with children he once cast aside for drugs. He threw himself into a year-long class to become a minister. Smith has been ordained, after spending 14 months learning his craft at the Faith Deliverance Teaching Center. He had, he proudly said, perfect attendance.

Now Smith feeds souls in a structure long known for nutrition of another kind.

As you enter the ministry, cans of food stand ready to be given out. There is a thrift shop. Glassware lines the shelves. There are tons of end-tables, lots of sofas and even a free-standing globe. You can pick out a set of cutlery, knick-knacks for your mantle, DVDs if you still have a player, and even a wedding dress. We Stand for Christ Jesus will accept nearly anything that can help someone.

Bennett describes it as his favorite thrift shop. Smith, he said, takes it all in, puts it on the truck and figures out how it can help someone.

Smith is “so happy now,” former coach Bill Farley said. Farley now lives in Norman, Okla., retired from the job of being associate athletic director at the University of Oklahoma.

“Nobody can tell the story of poverty and addiction like Jimmy,” Farley said. “He speaks to people and he has the love and conviction for Lord Jesus.”

“He is passing on how his life has changed with the Lord,” Bennett said. “I have watched how Jimmy has helped those who literally were living under the bridge.”

There are a lot of Black ministers, Rockett said, who can appeal to Black congregations in a dynamic way. What sets Smith apart is his ability to appeal to white people.

“They love him,” Rockett said.

Ted Petersen met Smith a dozen or so years ago when both were volunteering for the youth basketball camp organized by former Kankakee Community College basketball coach Denny Lehnus. Petersen and Smith hit it off immediately.

Smith, Petersen said, has the ability to be tough and to be very fair at the same time with those in recovery.

“He can hold people accountable, and you know that he loves you at the same time,” Petersen said. “It’s a rare skill.”

The 14-pew church holds 11 a.m. Sunday services. About 20-30 people come. Dress is informal and Smith’s wife, Darice, preaches. There is a Wednesday Bible Study.

"They thought it would be too big for us," Smith said of the Homestead, "but We Stand for Christ Jesus is working to fill it up with activities."

Right now the structure is housing four men, all in a “spiritual-based recovery ministry.” There is room for up to eight, in singles, doubles and even a triple room.

“We take in broken people,” Smith said.

It is a program of self-reflection. There are lots of mirrors to force people to look themselves in the face, Smith explained. Motivational posters line the walls. Tigers growl in print. A runner is poised in the starting blocks, ready to run the race of life. A library is filled with Bibles and religious and self-help books. A map-like poster chronicles the journeys of St. Paul.

A schedule includes: cleaning your room; morning meal; Bible reading; work at a job site and dinner. By 10:30 p.m. all men must be inside. Lights and TV off at midnight.

This is not a “free program.”

“Faith without work is dead,” Smith said.

Rent is $600 a month, though sponsorships to defray the cost are welcome. A third of that money, $200 each month, is set aside to build a fund so that when residents leave, they have enough to start a new life, if they need a deposit, clothes or an appliance.

This is not permanent, Smith said. “We let men be men.”

The program is shortly to be expanded to include veterans. The former banquet area on the lowest floor is being subdivided. New drywall is being hung. Veterans will be able to stay for as long as two years, Smith said.

The rent implies work. We Stand for Christ Jesus works with other non-profits to find employment for the men. Some can also work right where they live. For those that need transportation, there are vans, plus the availability of the River Valley Metro bus.

The annual budget for the ministry is about $200,000. There is a collection box in the church and money from the thrift sales. A grant writer would help big time. The American Rescue Plan Act, COVID-19 relief money, has helped, but survival in the long run will depend on donations.

We Stand for Christ Jesus hosted its second annual fundraiser on Feb. 22 at the Civic Auditorium in Kankakee.

Any ministry would be a plus, but Smith is especially moved to be giving back in his hometown.

“I don’t know how we did it,” Smith said. “God has done it for us.”

“Through many dangers, toils and snares,

I have already come;

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.”

— From the Christian hymn by American poet and clergyman John Newton.