William Inwood Smith was an All-American football player for the Ohio State University

Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...

 Buckeyes

Ohio State Buckeyes football

The Ohio State Buckeyes football team is an intercollegiate varsity sports team of The Ohio State University. The team is a member of the Big Ten Conference of the NCAA, playing at the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly Division I-A, level. The team nickname is derived from the state...

 in the mid-1930s. A native of New Jersey, he moved with his family to Mansfield, Ohio

Mansfield, Ohio

Mansfield is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Richland County. The municipality is located in north-central Ohio in the western foothills of the Allegheny Plateau, approximately southwest of Cleveland and northeast of Columbus....

 as a boy. In addition to football, Smith was a competitive swimmer, basketball player, and track and field athlete. At the end of the 1935 college football season, Smith was selected as a first-team All-American by Grantland Rice

Grantland Rice

Grantland Rice was an early 20th century American sportswriter known for his elegant prose. His writing was published in newspapers around the country and broadcast on the radio.-Biography:...

 for Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....

and by a board of coaches for Pathé News

Pathe News

Pathé Newsreels were produced from 1910 until the 1970s, when production of newsreels was in general stopped. Pathé News today is known as British Pathé and its archive of over 90,000 reels is fully digitised and online.-History:...

. After graduating from Ohio State, Smith was employed by the Westinghouse Electric Manufacturing Co. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Cleveland. During World War II, Smith became district supervisor of the Office of Price Administration

Office of Price Administration

The Office of Price Administration was established within the Office for Emergency Management of the United States government by Executive Order 8875 on August 28, 1941. The functions of the OPA was originally to control money and rents after the outbreak of World War II.President Franklin D...

in Columbus, Ohio.