Smith: Long career with DNR dedicated to water safety

Tim Smalley was 4 years old when he fell off his family's dock into Cook Lake near Duluth.

He wasn't wearing a life jacket, and he couldn't swim.

"My dad was watching me out the cabin window, and saw me go in," said Smalley. "He pulled me out."

Smalley isn't sure if that close encounter sparked his career -- he has been the face of boat and water safety in Minnesota for the past 28 years with the Department of Natural Resources.

But growing up on a lake likely had an impact, he said.

"I learned some valuable water safety lessons -- and maybe (my interest) was ingrained at that age," said Smalley, 62, of Edina, who is retiring next week after 31 years with the DNR.

Smalley is known nationally for his boat and water safety TV and radio campaigns, is a frequent voice in the media and is credited with reducing boating fatalities in Minnesota and many other states that have used his messages.

The number of deaths has declined even as the number of boats has increased by 200,000. In 1984, when Smalley started, there were 24 boating fatalities -- and 3.82 deaths per 100,000 boaters. Last year, there were 16 boating deaths, but the rate was only 1.98 per 100,000 boaters.

"The national rate is 5.8 deaths per 100,000 boaters," Elverum said. (In 1961, Minnesota's rate was 27 per 100,000.)

Smalley grew up in Duluth and spent summers at the family cabin north of town. He has been boating since his parents let him drive the pontoon boat with the 5.5 horsepower Johnson outboard.

"I had to wear a life jacket," he said.

Later, as a teenager, he mounted a lawn mower engine on a Sears john boat, added a hand-carved wooden propeller and created an airboat to fish the shallow bays. The craft wouldn't meet today's safety standards -- but neither would the "submarine" that he also built as a kid, using an air compressor to breath under water.

"Half of our fatal boating accidents had alcohol involved," he said.

And one boating death is one too many.