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Guard Legacy
TRADITION OF SERVICE
By Mark L. Smith,
Secretary
Texas Private Security Board
IN THE NEXT FEW ISSUES you will be treated to the story of my family�s business. It contains all the elements of a bestseller or a first-run movie: adventure, romance, wartime drama and business intrigue. Ideas and inventions that we now take for granted began here. So buckle up for a wild ride.
Rewind to some time after the Civil War. A young Danish merchant seaman named Damm Gronburg set sail on a Danish-Dutch merchant ship with goods bound for America. Dazzled by tales of the promised land and the Oklahoma Land Rush, Gronburg decided to forego the formalities of immigrant processing through Ellis Island, jumped ship and made his way west hoping to secure his piece of Oklahoma. Alas, he missed the deadline by days and was left to decide what to do now that he was thousands of miles from home in a strange land. Wanting to assimilate as quickly as possible, he had changed his name to Andrew Albert Smith � my great-grandfather.
Great-grandfather Smith had left his home and belongings behind but he had brought with him a conservative religious upbringing that would influence his choice of a new career. Having missed the Land Rush, he wound up in Dallas, Texas, and became a preacher. Andrew Albert Smith had a son � my grandfather, George Albert Smith, our founder.
George Albert, being a �preacher�s kid,� had a strong sense of doing good and helping people which led him to join the Dallas Police Department around the turn of the 20th century. In addition to his well developed value system, he had also inherited an appreciation for hard work and determination that won him a promotion to chief of detectives and the respect and admiration of his fellows on the force. He also served as secretary of the Texas Peace Officers Association for many years. Mention my grandfather�s name and all agreed, he was �the best.�
AROUND THIS SAME TIME A DAMSEL named Mary Elizabeth Hurley came west with her family seeking a drier climate for health reasons. Soon Hurley became Mrs. Smith. At that time Dallas was bustling with commercial activity. George Albert saw that the business community was growing so fast it could use its own police force, and he began offering off duty security for commercial developments. At first grandfather saw it as an extension of his police duties, but grandmother saw it as a business, and in 1903 Smith Detective Agency was born, with George Albert doing the footwork and Mary Elizabeth keeping the books.
Later, as George Albert began using foot patrols to check on the businesses he was serving, the name Nightwatch Service was added. Soon Smith Detective Agency and Nightwatch Service had expanded to add guards, horse patrols, bicycle patrols and motorcycle patrols to the detective and foot patrol services.
George Albert left the police force and he and Mary Elizabeth grew the business. In fact, they had no competition till 1917 when Pinkerton�s came to town. My grandparents stayed busy, to say the least, but not too busy to start a family.
Enter my uncle, George Albert Smith, Jr. and my father, Andrew Louis Smith. More about them later.
Grandfather Smith was a great detective � �the best.� He was a great businessman. He was also a great card player. So good, in fact, that in one game he ended up with a 50,000-acre cattle ranch in New Mexico near and west of White Sands. The ranch became a summer retreat for our family from Dallas. As the locals got to know the Smiths, word of George Albert�s reputation as a lawman spread. He became �the law� when staying at the ranch, and he taught law enforcement to other area lawmen. As his reputation followed him, he was called upon to rid the area of rustlers who were stealing the ranchers� horses and cattle. Later, when the U.S. Government wanted local law enforcement to clear and secure the area around White Sands, George Albert�s knowledge of the area proved very valuable to the military. He cleared the area and established a civilian buffer zone around the perimeter while the military was setting up White Sands as a military base � the same White Sands that became the site of the Manhattan Project nuclear test grounds.
AS GRANDFATHER SPENT TIME IN NEW MEXICO, he saw that the many different legal jurisdictions limited lawmen and ranchers in pursuing rustlers and other criminals. To solve the problem of this maze of jurisdictional boundaries, he formulated the idea of a National Police Force and felt so strongly about it that he lobbied Washington repeatedly for its establishment. There were no takers. He finally gave up and went home after his idea was dismissed by everyone save one lowly clerk with no influence at the time. The clerk was named J. Edgar Hoover.
Earlier I mentioned George Albert Smith, Jr. � my Uncle George. Uncle George went to college and studied electrical engineering. Burglar alarms were already in existence in rudimentary form, but Uncle George, who was technologically educated and talented, improved upon alarm technology by adapting the new McCullough Loop to dispatch patrolmen from a central station. The family business naturally expanded into burglar alarms.
During his time he received the Engineers Club Engineer of the Year Award and gained approval from Underwriters� Laboratories for a frequency division multiplexer that allowed Smith to transmit thousands of alarm signals from a single phone line with a constantly supervised back line.
Uncle George went on to become prominent in industry associations. He was a prime mover in the establishment of the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. He was head of the National Alarm Association in 1967 during the monopoly case against AT&T. He was also instrumental in forming the Associated Security Services and Investigators of the State of Texas. At that time local police departments required that every private security company be licensed in every city. When ASSIST lobbied the legislature to form a state agency to regulate the security industry, Uncle George was one of the first board members of the newly formed state oversight board, the Texas Board of Private Investigators and Private Security Agencies, the forerunner of today�s Texas Private Security Board, on which I am privileged to serve today.
Eventually, an aging George Albert, Sr. looked to pass the business on to his children. Seeing that their interests diverged and sometimes conflicted � George Albert, Jr., the technology whiz and Andrew Louis the sales and marketing wonder � the business was split in two. Smith Detective dba Smith Alarm was led by George Albert, Jr. and was sold in 1990. Smith Nightwatch eventually was bought outright by my father, Andrew Louis, and renamed Smith Protective Services.
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More about Andrew Louis Smith in Part II coming in next issue.
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