By Kate Wiltrout
For Coastal Senior

Steve Bisson photo
John Roberson and Scott Smith survey the flooded grounds at Fort Jackson in this Nov. 12, 1981, photo.

As head of the Coastal Heritage Society, Smith has been at the helm of several significant preservation projects.

SAVANNAH

Scott Smith was born outside Rome, N.Y., in 1948. As a child, he read "Northwest Passage," a book he credits with lighting his historical curiosity.

He studied illustration and painting at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which he says taught him to solve problems and think in new ways. He served a tour in Korea after being drafted into the Army, eventually ending up at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.

He lived out of his truck for about six months as he visited friends throughout the eastern United States. His travels led him to Fort Pulaski, where he eventually got a job.

A short time later, Smith decided to get out of government work. He was one of the founding members of the Coastal Heritage Society, which has grown from an organization with a half-dozen people to one that employs 65 and runs three sites.

Smith enjoys hiking, hunting and fishing. His home is full of about 2,000 books. After years of demonstrating antique muskets and rifles for onlookers, he's now a firearms collector.

"Almost all of my hobbies have gotten absorbed into my employment," Smith said.

His days are filled with old locomotives, antique steam engines, Revolutionary War battlefields and preserving an old fort on the Savannah River.

At night, though, Scott Smith forgets about the 18th and 19th centuries by surfing the Internet for the movies of his childhood: Westerns like his latest acquisition, a Gary Cooper flick called "The Plainsman." His hobby isn't all that different from his work, however.

As the longtime director of the Coastal Heritage Society, Smith's life work has been using the latest technology to look back at the past. He brings the past alive for people whose imaginations are less fertile than his own.

His work won him a prestigious local award last month. The Historic Savannah Foundation awarded Smith its Davenport Trophy, given just 15 times in the past 40 years. The trophy signifies lifetime accomplishment in historic preservation. Previous recipients: W.W. Law, Mills B. Lane IV and Lee and Emma Adler.

Foundation director Mark McDonald cited the restoration of Fort Jackson, the Roundhouse Complex and the Savannah History Museum as Smith's concrete achievements. Just as important, McDonald added, is the vision that motivates Smith.

Also last month, another of Smith's dreams took a step closer to reality: the city of Savannah announced a tentative deal to purchase a stretch of land between the Roundhouse complex and the Savannah Visitors Center. The tract was the site of a bloody Revolutionary War battle that killed about 1,000 freedom fighters. Later, it was a Central of Georgia rail yard.

As often happens, Smith is already off and running with ideas for the site. He clasps a master plan, full of color drawings of rehabbed buildings and exhibits.

With the city close to striking a deal on the site, he has visions of a science museum, possibly displaying a Confederate submarine that's now submerged in the Savannah River. For the Siege of Savannah grounds, at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Louisville Road, Smith envisions a replica of the crude British fort, or redoubt, where about 400 redcoats held off around 3,000 continental soldiers and their allies.

He sees a dignified, quiet display -- not one full of the sounds of cannons exploding and jazzy computer graphics depicting troop movements.

"The human imagination is a lot more powerful than gimmick exhibits," Smith said.

The battlefield site is a tricky one for historians: unlike many historic spots in American history, this one has more than one story to tell. The battleground's story is overlaid with its 19th century use, part of a burgeoning railroad that changed the face of the United States.

McDonald is confident Smith can handle the challenge. He applauds Smith for preserving sites that don't fit in with Savannah's typical antebellum image.

"They are not the stereotypical Savannah, moonlight and magnolias historic sites. They're your gritty industrial sights that actually played an incredibly important role in the making of this city," McDonald said.


Yankee Down South

So who is Smith, and how did a Yankee find himself so much a part of Savannah's history?

Growing up in New York, the 54-year-old's childhood imagination was sparked by tales of the siege of nearby Fort Stanwick, a battle that killed hundreds of local militia during the Revolutionary War.

He majored in illustration and minored in painting at the Rochester Institute of Technology - then became an artillery expert when he was drafted into the U.S. Army after graduation. Smith spent a few years in Korea. He returned to the States and worked as a postman for a while so he could save up some money. Then he built a camper top for his pickup truck and rambled around the eastern United States. One of his stops was at Fort Pulaski, where he applied for a job.

His future boss was impressed with Smith's teen-age resume: he'd built a bonafide fort at home. "This was not some little thing," said Rusty Fleetwood, who worked with him at Fort Pulaski. "It was a big deal. Very impressive. Not something you'd expect some teen-ager to do."

Smith spent a short time working at Fort Pulaski. Then both he and Fleetwood left, deciding to start their own organization with a few other individuals. They called it the Coastal Heritage Society, and their first project was another fort -- this one a few miles up the Savannah River.

Fort Jackson -- which Savannahians may know best as the home of the Scottish Games each spring -- had been operated by the state. When the government pulled out in the mid 1970s, CHS stepped in.

Smith and Fleetwood and Frances Wilson, who would eventually become Smith's wife, started with lots of energy but no money. They organized auctions and turkey shoots to raise money.

When Smith learned a pre-Civil War steam engine built in Charleston was for sale, they didn't have the $4,200 its owner was asking. They went out on a limb and decided to buy it - with borrowed money.

"We paid on that thing for years," Smith said. The payments: $80 a month.

Now a prized piece in one of the many buildings at the Roundhouse complex, the old Smith and Porter portable engine gleams. It's had $27,000 in cosmetic restorations.

Smith is proud that his organization owns a portable steam engine older than the one at the Smithsonian - and one made in the South before the Civil War.

It belies the notion that the South was an industrial backwater dependent on the north for technology and innovation.

Though the Smith and Porter is now just one of many machines at the Roundhouse - which has numerous steam engines, cabooses and a working iron forge - it's still one of Smith's favorite pieces.

"We had no business doing that," Smith said with a chuckle, almost like he was surprised at his own audacity at buying the piece. "We should have just been conservative. But we went ahead with it and made it work. I'm kind of tickled about it."


Small budget, big dreams

His colleagues say that's exactly what makes Smith successful. He thinks big, then finds a way to make it happen, shoestring budget be damned.

The society had a budget of about $20,000 in 1976. Today, with a staff of 65, the budget is about $2 million. Some comes from city, state and federal funds. The rest is private donations and entrance fees.

"I am still amazed by the stuff that goes on, and the size of the organization that he's built," said Fleetwood, the society's first director.

Fleetwood saw the society's purchase of the railroad properties as an albatross.

These days, about 30,000 people stop at the Roundhouse complex each year.

The immediate past president of the society's board of directors, Malcolm MacKenzie, thinks that number is just scratching the surface.

"We're poised right now on the brink of what I think is going to be really one of the great attractions of the southeast," MacKenzie said, referring to the idea of the battlefield, Roundhouse and Savannah Visitors Center as one destination.

He sees Smith as an "historical entrepreneur," someone whose passion for history is matched by his passion for sharing it with others.

Fleetwood also credits Smith's talent for being a manager and administrator.

"I'm sure he's alienated a few people, but by and large he's the kind of guy that people want to work for," Fleetwood said.

No one knew he had those abilities when he showed up at Fort Pulaski, living out of his truck with a foggy sense of what he wanted to do with his life.

But as much as Smith is a devoted history lover with a teacher's passion for sharing it, he's a realist too.

Asked what era he would pick if he had the chance to go back in history, Smith qualifies his answer.

"Really, we're living in the best of times," he said. "History is a dangerous place to be. The intolerance, disesase, violence, the justice system. It would be a dangerous place, even for a day."

He doubts he'd want to see the Siege of Fort Stanwick or the Siege of Savannah.

"I don't know if I have the heart to watch a battle as a curiosity," Smith said.

But he would love to meet some of the country's most fascinating figures: Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abe Lincoln.

He's content to restore old things during his free time. Whether it's restoring his memory of old movies, restoring a log cabin in the mountains of Virginia, or slowly restoring a 50-year-old army truck, Smith enjoys learning the lessons of the past.

He's overwhelmed by the award, crediting those along the way who have inspired him and worked alongside him during the past 27 years.

"I've been sort of a backdoor person in this field," Smith said. "All the years we were struggling along - the fact that we were noticed was touching."