Residents salute Wagener's Spencer Smith, 100

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Oct. 5—The funeral for World War II veteran Spencer Claude Smith, one of South Carolina's most prominent agriculture teachers, is set for Wednesday afternoon, with Wagener First Baptist Church as the host site.

"Spencer was a great American, a great Christian, a great educator and a great community leader," said retired educator John Parris, whose friendship with Smith dates back to 1958. "Our state has lost a giant in the passing of Spencer Smith."

The 100-year-old's funeral is to be at 2 p.m., following visitation from noon to 1:45 p.m. Burial, with military honors, will be in Wagener Cemetery. Smith died Sept. 30 in Wagener.

The Purple Heart recipient, a native of the tiny Oconee County community of Madison, was shot in the face while in the early stages of advancing into Germany in September 1944. Following successful plastic surgery, he studied at Clemson University and received a degree in vocational agricultural education in 1947, and the decades that followed would see him lead "ag ed" at what is now known as Wagener-Salley High School, where a prominent structure now bears the label of "S.C. Smith Ag. Bldg."

He taught agriculture and led the FFA program in Wagener from 1947 until 1982 and provided a variety of extremely valuable life lessons — in addition to traditional classroom lessons — over the course of the decades, according to retired businessman Howard Corbett, a 1967 graduate of Wagener High School (prior to the Salley merger).

The Anderson resident, benefiting from strong, ongoing encouragement from Smith, wound up having collegiate and university success and moving on to "a great career," he recalled. "I personally owe all of that to Mr. Smith ... He was far, far more than a teacher. He did more than just talk the talk. He walked the walk."

Corbett added, "He really lifted me. He launched me and he kept his eye on me, and he kept a voice in my ear that, even though he wasn't there, just kind of guided me."

Looking back to his own teenage years, he referred to Smith as his first mentor and also his last, since Smith outlived the similar figures in Corbett's life.

Mike Miller, Wagener's mayor, was one of Smith's students. He mentioned having visited with Smith in the last week of September, after seeing that the 100-year-old was "still out there on his little John Deere riding lawn mower, cutting his grass," a few yards from the highway connecting Wagener to Perry

The mayor, recalling that conversation, said Smith "was very clear, very coherent, very lucid and he remembered everyone."

As for the Smith from several decades earlier, Miller said, "He looked after you, but he was a disciplinarian, too, I guess you would say, but a very fair disciplinarian. He was a good man. I'm glad we had a good relationship that we maintained until his end. If he could help you, he would."