He began wending his way to Colby's senior administration by a non-traditional route that began when a managing editor of the Morning Sentinel recognized Smith's potential and urged him to go to college. Smith sold his 1941 Buick (a gift from his grandfather) for $50, which paid for a semester at the University of Maine at Orono. The UMO public relations department needed a photographer and Smith landed the post and became editor of the university newspaper. He married Barbara Hubbard, a sweetheart from Waterville, while still at UMO and they had a daughter, Kelly. Smith was a stringer for the Bangor Daily News, peddling photos to magazines.

"Pictures of people swallowing goldfish and seeing how many people you could put in a phone booth," he said. Life magazine bought a Smith photo of "co-eds crammed into a hollow tree."

Publicity photo of Smith early in his career at Colby

After graduation with a journalism degree, Smith returned to Waterville and was promptly offered a job at the Morning Sentinel: telegraph editor for $5,000 a year. Before he could accept, Dick Dyer, then Colby's public relations director, offered a job as news assistant-photographer. The pay was the same. "It wasn't as easy as you would think," Smith said. "I wanted to be a journalist and this was a tub-thumping job, a flak, a P.R. job. But I took [Colby] because it was days and I had two children. It turned out this job was day and night anyway."

Smith covered sports, wrote game stories and press releases. He took photos, including senior pictures ("people swinging from birches"), and had lots of student friends. Some, like Colby football star Steve Freyer '67, now a Boston-based sports and entertainment agent, still remember the photos Smith staged: football shots in treeless spring, Freyer and other Red Sox fans ostensibly listening to the 1967 World Series during football practice. "He was always conjuring up ways to promote the school," Freyer said. "Just a wonderful guy."

Others agreed. Promoted from the news bureau to student activities director (1968) to associate dean of students (1970), Smith became an invaluable resource as the Vietnam War sparked protests on campus and students demanded changes and an increased role at the College.

"He seemed to have that same remarkable, uncanny sense of what was fit and right when it came to dealing with the students as he did in dealing with the faculty and staff," said former President Robert Strider. "And that takes talent. . . . He was a pillar for me, a right-hand person because I needed all the help I could get. These were tough times and the president was beleaguered. Earl had this remarkable way of talking to the students. He was tough with them but they liked him and it was obvious."

It was equally obvious that Smith had found a place in Colby's inner circle. He never left.