[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 91 (Thursday, June 7, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Page S7326]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO MARK C. SMITH

 Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to remember the life of 
Mark C. Smith, who was one of the most resourceful and brilliant 
entrepreneurs in the history of the State of Alabama. His departing 
this life on March 27, 2007, leaves an irreplaceable loss for his 
family, his home town of Huntsville, the State of Alabama, and the 
Nation. Few men in the history of America's free enterprise system have 
attained such lofty heights in business as Mark Smith. Starting with 
very little and coming from humble family beginnings, Smith invented, 
designed, and managed companies under his ownership and tutelage to 
heights that draw the envy of the corporate world.
  Mark was raised in Birmingham, graduating in 1958 from Woodlawn High 
School. He was the son of parents who were both teachers. During high 
school, Smith became a ham radio buff and developed an interest in 
science. Upon winning first place in a science fair at Woodlawn, 
Smith's prize was a handshake from Dr. Von Braun. The young high school 
graduate saw this as a grand opportunity and boldly asked Dr. Von Braun 
for a summer job. Smith went on to attend the Georgia Institute of 
Technology, and over the next three summers he worked at NASA in 
Huntsville and Cape Canaveral.
  During the summer preceding his last year of college, he was employed 
with SCI Systems, Inc., and upon earning an electrical engineering 
degree from Georgia Tech in 1962, he began full-time employment with 
SCI as an engineering manager. In 1969 his entrepreneurial spirit took 
hold, and he left SCI to cofound Universal Data Systems, UDS--out of 
his home garage and with $30,000 in savings. UDS, the first data 
communications company in Alabama, was quite successful and in 1979, 
with annual revenues of about $20 million, was sold to Motorola. At 
that time, Smith became president of the UDS-Motorola Division. In 
1985, the proven visionary was ready to take on yet another challenge; 
he left UDS and cofounded ADTRAN, Inc. As CEO and chairman, Smith led 
the startup company of seven employees to become a publicly traded 
company in 1994, the same year ADTRAN announced a $50 million expansion 
of its facility. Today, with more than 1,600 employees and annual 
revenues approaching $500 million, the company is a worldwide leader in 
providing high-speed network access products to the telecommunications 
equipment industry.
  Mark did not live to see the ultimate heights that the electronic 
communication industry will attain in the future. Entrepreneurs and 
engineers will someday produce faster and better equipment, but when 
they do they will use as a pattern some of Mark Smith's ideas, 
inventions, and procedures.

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