USNA ’87
Born in 1964 to Admiral William D. Smith (USNA ’55) and Sabra Harriman Smith, Fritz spent his early years moving, traveling and becoming familiar with many, many, many naval facilities around the country and world. In that time he was intrigued and inspired to try his hand at the “family business” and received an appointment to USNA after a year of preparatory work at Mercersberg Academy on a Naval Academy Foundation scholarship.
After graduation from USNA in 1987, he attended nuclear power training and was assigned to USS CITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI (SSN 705) and later as the assistant Public Affairs Officer for Submarine Group TWO in Groton, Connecticut.
He later decided to explore the “real world” of academia and enrolled in the Ph.D. History program at Purdue University. He received an M.A. in History and while working on a dissertation in American history, he found employment with the C-SPAN archives near Purdue in West Lafayette, Indiana. He continued to work as both an archivist and a sometimes news editor for the network, remaining in Indiana as a home base, sometimes finding projects in the Washington, DC corporate offices.
Fritz passed away 18 March, 2014.