By Bea Lueck | Golden Corridor Living
GC LIVING: Tell me where you were born and raised, and a little bit about your family.
Tony Smith: I was born in Muncie, Indiana, and I grew up in a suburb of Indianapolis that was about 12,000 people, very small-town atmosphere, and it seemed like we lived the best of that life. I had a great childhood. We had a family of five boys — I was the fourth. And we had just a ton of fun growing up, with the challenges of an average working-class family. My dad worked for the post office and my mom was a nurse, and so we all had to learn to cook and do our own laundry. We had a busy household, a working mom, and so we got to know the domestic chores.
We learned to cook and do our own laundry before we left the house. I’d have to say that with some of the criteria for my own children, I wanted them to have a driver’s license, be able to cook and do their laundry, and there’s a good possibility maybe they won’t come back home. And that did it. That’s the way it worked for me.
GC LIVING: Where did you go to college?
Tony Smith: Purdue University. I went at the Indianapolis extension, so I did not go to West Lafayette, where their main campus is located, but I’m still a very passionate Purdue fan. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in construction technology, and at that time it was in the mid-‘70s and the business environment was just terrible. There was not much happening in construction, so I followed the engineering route and worked for a couple of firms doing steel home pipe engineering.
