Despite a successful track and field career at tiny Bayard High School in Iowa, Brian Smith didn't think running at the college level was a realistic possibility.
"I'd been looking to compete for Iowa State and Iowa after high school and it was pretty clear it wasn't going to happen for me at those places," said Smith, who'd qualified for the Class C state meet in Iowa three times in the 3,200-meter run - finishing second as a junior in 1978.
He had also competed with the INJUVE track club in Campeche, Mexico, running at track and road race events in the Yucatan while a high school exchange student there.
"Really, the only two schools that were recruiting me were Pittsburg State in Kansas and a junior college (Sioux Empire College) in Hawarden, Iowa that's not even open anymore," he continued.
Smith had heard about and was intrigued by Saint John's, where his father and mother attended formation retreats to become a permanent deacon couple for the Diocese of Des Moines. It helped too, that his mother had some familiarity with the school, having grown up near the Iron Range in Grand Rapids.
"We summered near Grand Rapids when I was a kid while mom was finishing college in Missouri during those summer months," recalled Smith, one of just 24 students in his high school graduating class. "So I was used to the lake life. I was used to the forest. Those types of surroundings always had a special place in my heart.
"My parents told me I needed to check out Saint John's – that it was a special place to them and they thought it might be a great fit for me too. We took a side trip there while driving to Grand Rapids the summer before my senior year and we checked out the campus. I was smitten right away. I knew it was the place for me."
And, to his surprise, Saint John's was a place he could run as well.
"At that time, I truly believed I didn't have the chops to run anywhere at the college level, but on my first campus visit I met with Dave Lyndgaard who was an admissions counselor and the track coach." Smith said. "He was asking me what classes I'd taken and what extracurriculars I was involved in. When I told him I ran track, he said 'Tell me more.' After I told him everything, he said I should run at Saint John's.
"I thought to myself 'Really, I can?'"
He certainly could, as the next few years would bear out.
Smith went on to earn All-America honors three times in cross country (a sport he participated in for the first time at SJU) and track and field while recording seven All-MIAC performances.
"He was a very consistent performer," recalled Tim Miles '76, his head coach in both cross country and track and field.
Miles took over both jobs in time for Smith's freshman seasons in 1979-80.
"He was never an up-and-down guy," he continued. "He was very steady. He didn't have very many sub-par races, but even when he did, he always found something to learn from that made him better going forward."
That steadiness showed in his progression through the years. In 1981, he finished third in the 10,000 meters at the MIAC meet, then placed second in the 10,000 and first in the 5,000 the following year before going on to a second-place finish in the 5,000 at the NCAA Division III national meet.
That set the stage for the spring of 1983 when he won the 1,500 and finished second in the 5,000 at the MIAC championships before winning a national title in the 5,000 at the Division III national meet held in Naperville, Illinois – recording a time of 14:19.70, a school record that still stands 42 years later.
Jim Kavanaugh of Illinois Benedictine led the field for much of the race, but with 600 meters to go, Smith made his push – bringing home the first national championship in program history. Two of his teammates, Rob Sauer and Charlie Mahler, finished 10th and 11th in that race.
"I decided I was going to break it open and see who had the goods," Smith remembered. "So I put the hammer down. There were no prelims that year - just the final. So I was fresh and ready to go.
"Really, it all came down to running my race. That was the philosophy Tim instilled in us. Making sure our checkpoints come from within."
Smith closed out his collegiate career with a third-place finish at the Division III national cross country meet in Newport News, Va. in the fall of 1983. His time (23:56 over the 8,000-meter course) shattered his previous personal best by almost a minute and far exceeded his second-place time of 25:16 at the MIAC meet a few weeks earlier. His finish time that day in 1983 still stands in top 10 all-time finishes at the Division III cross country championships.
"I thought I was a shoo-in for All-American honors at the NCAA national cross country meet the year before at SUNY-Fredonia but I didn't have a very good race (finishing 35th overall)," said Smith, who competed at the national meet three times total in cross country during his time at SJU.
"I told myself I needed to do better at nationals this time and I did. That finish, and that time I posted in Newport News, was a nice note to end my SJU career on."
But despite all that success, the one race that stands out most when he looks back on his time at SJU came in his home state at the Drake Relays in Des Moines in the spring of 1983.
"They had an announcer at that meet by the name of Jim Duncan (who handled all public address duties for the Drake Relays from 1951 until his death in 1989)," Smith said. "He was a journalism professor (at Drake), but he had a photographic memory when it came to names. All year long, he'd pore over result sheets and knew the pedigree of the hundreds of athletes competing for the four days of events at Drake Stadium. I met up with Mr. Duncan years later, while working the NCAA Division I cross country meet in 1988, and when I said who I was, he was able to tell me which teams I'd been on. He was particularly accurate about my accomplishments on the track, on the cross country courses and on the roads. We will not see the likes of his kind again."
"So there we were on a beautiful spring day, in a stadium with 12,000 people in the stands, and I was running the anchor leg of the medley relay," he continued getting back to that day. "I got the baton from Steve Berg, and I was in a pack of five runners. All of a sudden, I hear Duncan's voice pointing out there were three state-level competitors from Iowa in this pack and we'd never run against each other before. Then he mentioned my name, hometown and achievements. He kept talking about us the entire four laps, getting everyone fired up in the stands. I ended up running under 4:10 for the mile leg that day – the best time I ever ran for that distance. I left everything on the track.
"The national meets, making All American three times and winning a national title, was great. But if I got to relive a day in track heaven, that day would be it for me. Everything was perfect."
Miles, meanwhile, remembers Smith coming up big not just athletically, but mechanically as well.
"Brian did not panic in his races or anywhere else," Miles said. "He was a good guy to have around in a crisis. I can remember we had a regional (cross country) meet down in Pella, Iowa in 1982. A blizzard was forecast so we left town Thursday instead of Friday morning.
"We were driving a 15-person van, and around Owatonna on Interstate 35, it started to feel like we had less and less power with every rise in the road. We pulled into a service station, and Brian said it probably needed transmission fluid. Turns out he was right. He and his dad had worked with farm equipment repairs for a living, so he knew some things.
"And we got down to Iowa ahead of the storm."
Smith continued to run competitively for Reebok for several years after his college career ended and also landed a position as a student assistant coach at Iowa State while completing work on a second degree there.
"That time of my life was so great," Smith said. "There were four Olympic medalists, an eventual world cross country champion and an eventual world record holder at 5,000 meters on that team at Iowa State. Training with them really helped me take my running up a notch."
He later spent a year on a study exchange and food industry research internship in Dunedin, New Zealand while competing for Reebok, Hill City Athletics and the Otago Provincial team in cross country, track and road race relays at the national level in New Zealand before returning to Des Moines, where he met and married his first wife Maureen. After a year of world travel and several months of volunteer hospital work with his wife in Saint Lucia, the couple returned to Des Moines to raise their daughters Anne and Bridget.
Maureen passed away unexpectedly in 2010, leaving Smith a single parent. He remarried nine years later. His second wife Ann was diagnosed with glioblastoma tumors in her brain in 2024 and died in January of this year.
That's more tragedy than anyone should have to bear, but Smith said his continuing connection to SJU has helped him to come to terms with those losses and to grow from them - though that process has been far from easy or painless.
"After my first wife died, Fr. Don Talafous (who passed away this past April) sent me a letter that said 'We can't take the pain away, but just know this community is praying for you,'' he said. "That meant so much to me, and I felt the need to reconnect with a place that would hold me up if my heart ever decided to go on walkabout, which it did quite often in those days.
"That first fall after Maureen's death, I went to stay at the (Abbey) Guest House for a few days by myself. I knew Daddy needed some time to step away from single parenting two pre-teen daughters, and from a demanding job at the very least. I was there for a long weekend and no one was on campus. I prayed with the monks, walked the trails, read some and napped frequently. I came home rejuvenated. Ever since then, I've been coming back a couple times a year (sometimes with daughters and my second wife in tow). Eventually, I decided to join the Abbey as an Oblate of the Order of Saint Benedict. I have been an Oblate for five years now."
"We hear so much so much about the Saint John's community, but it is truly something tangible I've known and felt since the first day I set foot on campus," he continued. "I'm part of a global Johnnie/Bennie family now, because of my days on campus. The Benedictine hospitality is truly in the water here in Collegeville, and that fundamental dictum of the Rule of Saint Benedict - to see Christ in others and to give hospitality to them as a result - has enabled me to live a very full and fulfilling life despite the challenges that have come my way. I can embrace the sadness and the pain because of the people, the community and mostly because of the God who dwells within all of us. As I have come to understand from the monastics, grief shared is halved and joy shared is doubled.
"Degree and honors aside, Saint John's gave me the tools I've needed to sustain my life in such a way that creates meaning for myself and for the people around me. I deal with persons in medical and psychological trauma in my job every day and I need a true north to look toward when the going gets difficult for myself, my family, my colleagues and my patients. The education and character development I received at SJU went far beyond the utilitarian task of gaining an educational credential. I feel I've been able to adapt well to this modern world to live a well-reasoned, dignified life for myself and to be able to illuminate that possibility for the others whom I touch every single day."
