GROWING UP, 1931-49 "Mother called him Christopher Columbus" Dean Edwards Smith was born on Feb. 28, 1931, in the east Kansas railroad town of Emporia, the only son of devout Baptist schoolteachers. His mother, Vesta, was an organized woman who would lay out the breakfast place settings the night before. His father, Alfred, was a forward-thinking coach at Emporia High whose Spartans won the 1934 state title with the first black basketball player in Kansas tournament history.   The young explorer who was dubbed Christopher Columbus by his mother stood still long enough to pose with his sister, Joan. photograph courtesy of Joan Smith Ewing Over the summer of 1947, in time for Dean's junior year in high school, the Smiths moved to Topeka. In high school Dean always held down the coachly positions—quarterback, catcher, point guard. But he was also a spirited boy and seemed unlikely to become a man who would stay on one campus for nearly 40 years. JOAN SMITH EWING, his older sister: Dean wasn't mischievous so much as curious. When he was very small, he and the little girl next door took off and walked to the florist around the block. They were pretending they were Bill and Betty—Bill was a player on Dad's team, and Betty was his girlfriend. My parents were scared to death when they discovered them missing. When he was 10 or so, Dean and a neighbor friend went down a manhole at the end of our street and explored the sewers. Another time he climbed the tower at the teachers' college. Mother used to call him Christopher Columbus because he always wanted to explore. BUD ROBERTS, high school classmate: We'd play one-on-one in the alley, games to 20 by twos. He was very competitive, yet neither of us had any money, so he'd say, "Whoever loses has to tell the winner, 'You're a much better basketball player than I am.'" I was the one who always had to say it. JOAN SMITH EWING: The summer before ninth grade he lost his best friend, Shad Woodruff, to polio. He and Shad had played baseball on the Fourth of July, and the next day Shad was dead of lumbar polio. All of us were devastated. But Dean's reaction was very positive. He made a scrapbook of Shad's accomplishments, awards and activities at school and gave it to Shad's mother and father. It was his way of working out his grief. He's never been one to linger over disappointments. He values what comes from the past but has always been ready to move forward, to do more exploring. Next: COLLEGE YEARS, 1949-53