The man. The myth. The legend, Smitty. Lindell “Smitty” Smith has made his mark in the small town of Flora, Illinois. 

 Smitty is now 75 years old and is a workaholic; he runs the Clay County Republican writing and publishing newspapers, while also running a full-time gym. 

Starting out he didn’t have any plans to be a journalist saying “I’ve been a card-carrying boilermaker for decades, and I thought I’d go to school for a while, suck up a little VA and then go back to making a lot of money. I had a counselor who suggested that I take a journalism class with her aunt. I told her ‘I have trouble writing structured because English teachers seem more concerned about whether you can diagram the sentence rather than whether it reads well, so she said give her a try. Then I started down this rabbit hole.”

“My favorite thing to shoot is anything that presents a challenge,” Smitty says. “I have more trouble with things that don’t move.” He works with FHS taking photos for school events, sports, and awards, and even attends our Veteran Day program every year.

Smitty started the Clay County Republican around 2001 after parting ways with the Clay County Advocate Press. “I had been at the Clay County Advocate Press for a quarter of a century, they hired a publisher, and he and I didn’t get along very well. He thought that newspapers were all about making money and I thought newspapers were all about putting out fun stuff. So we had a parting of ways.” That was when Smitty was offered to buy a newspaper starting the Clay County Republican, putting the other press out of business shortly after. 

  Smitty’s motto with every story is “Coulda been better, shoulda been better,” saying that’s what he tells his wife when she asks about a story. “I firmly believe that when you stop challenging yourself, when you think ‘I’m pretty good at this’ then the only way you have to go is down. I get up every day and find a new challenge,” Smitty added.

In 1987 Smitty opened a gym uptown, but it wasn’t always what it is now.  The gym used to be run out of his own home. “It was a lot more fun,” he says. “If someone wanted to do a 4-500 pound squat or deadlift everyone else in the gym had to stop because it was only a 20 by 30 square foot room and there was no room.” Now he says a kid regularly deadlifts 5-600 pounds and no one would know it unless you ask. Bob Felts ran a gym called “The Home Gym” where Smitty worked out. When Felts told Smitty he was moving, he knew he had to do something about a gym. “Let’s see if we can build one!” Smitty told his wife Mable, after hearing the news. “So in the back of our house, we put 20 to 30 on and 600 squared feet later we’re running a gym.”

One of his favorite parts of running the gym is making people stronger. “I read a lot because of that. I spent a lot of time seeing what’s new and how to make people stronger.”

A big challenge in opening a gym was when he first started building, he started constructing in mid-February knocking out the back of his house. “That’s how dumb I can be,” he states. 

No matter what job he’s focusing on, he feels the same about them. “Teaching, being in contact with you, trying to make people stronger,” He said. Smitty’s favorite thing about journaling and running a full-time gym.