When Daryl Smith aka Dum-Dum moved to Richmond Hgts with his family all of us living on SW 153rd Terr. We were in awe of the size of Daryl. He stood out amongst us all. He was the first of us all then in the sixth grade to play pick up tackle games with the older guys in the neighborhood who played at the junior high. He was devasting, he basically dominated them.
Daryl quickly became the guy that we all looked up to. We called him "Dum-Dum" because he would ask questions about everything and I think it was our way of trying to equalize the maturity gap that was between us and Daryl. He was smooth with the girls and had an unbelievable voice, I still remember him singing "When a man loves a women" at the junior high talent show.
In 9th grade Daryl transfered to Mays Sr High while I was sweating it to make the Killian JV team, Daryl was starting middle linebacker for the Mays High Rams! Daryl was big and he was our HERO. On the street we joked and chided with him we started calling him officer Dibble only because we were, jealous, young and stupid. Daryl took every name and wore it with pride. We had no choice but to stop calling him the names we was wearing and they became his BADGE of honor.
Daryl was injured at Mays midway through his freshman year. He couldn't play linebacker any more so he learned to kick field goals. Well he was soon kicking 50 yard field goals. In our senior year Daryl transfered to Killian. His knees were shot but damn that boy could kick. Once we needed a field goal because we had this fantastic offense that yours truly was a part of, just to say that we scored. I remember it being close to 70 yards. Daryl made it and was the leading scorer on the 1970 team.
After graduation we went our separate ways. I heard he went to Clark College. Time passed and I came back to Miami got married moved to Coconut Grove and hadn't seen Daryl in years until I saw him at the Gombay Festival in City of Miami Police Blue. We got reacquainted and lost touch with each other. Years later we all saw his car on fire after being hit by a drunk driver. I mentioned earlier about how he wore his nick name as a BADGE of pride and later found out how well he wore the BADGE he earned from the City of Miami. There are those among us who can speak better of his latter years, I remember a gentle soft spoken giant that knew what he wanted and did not step on anyone to acheive his goals and had no problem helping anyone.
Officer Daryl Smith
Robert McKnight
