CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Time may have dimmed his memory, but Dean Smith’s legacy continues to shine brighter than ever in Chapel Hill. The legendary coach, who built North Carolina basketball into more than just a program but a family, now battles dementia — yet even in silence, his impact echoes. In the gentle strum of a song, in the sea of Carolina blue, and in every “Hark the Sound” sung by Tar Heel voices, Smith’s presence still finds a way to break through, reminding all who loved him that his spirit remains woven into the very soul of UNC.
Dean Smith doesn’t watch the games anymore. The motion on the screen is too hard to follow. Now he thumbs through golf magazines and picture books. Most of the books are about North Carolina basketball. They seem to make him happy. He turns the pages past photo after photo of himself. Nobody knows if he knows who he is.
Music seems to make him happy, too. About a year and a half ago, a friend named Billy Barnes came over to the house to play guitar and sing a few songs. Barnes played old Baptist hymns and barbershop quartet tunes — Daisy Daisy, give me your answer true. Music he knew Dean liked. But nothing seemed to get through. Dean was getting restless. Barnes asked if he could play one more song.
After every basketball game, win or lose, the UNC band plays the alma mater and fight song. The Carolina people stand and sing. Barnes knew Dean had heard the song thousands of times. He started to play.
Dean jumped to his feet. He waved at his wife, Linnea, to stand with him. He put his hand over his heart and sang from memory:
Hark the sound of Tar Heel voices
Ringing clear and true.
Singing Carolina’s praises,
Shouting N-C-U.
Hail to the brightest star of all
Clear its radiance shine
Carolina priceless gem,
Receive all praises thine.
I’m a Tar Heel born, I’m a Tar Heel bred, and when I die I’m a Tar Heel dead!
So it’s rah-rah Car’lina-lina, rah-rah Car’lina-lina, rah-rah Carolina, rah, rah, rah!
“It was just pure joy. That uninhibited joy in the music,” Linnea says. “It’s one of those moments that you know there’s more there, or momentarily there, than sometimes you’re aware of.”
This is what she hopes for now. A moment of joy. A moment of connection. A moment when Dean Smith is still there.
For 36 years as the Tar Heels’ head coach, Dean Smith built a family. He created a shared identity for the legions of UNC fans who still buy the tickets and wear the T-shirts and paint their dens Carolina blue. His teams won 20 or more games for 27 years in a row. But more than that, they won with a selfless style. Dean’s most lasting invention was his simplest: When you make a basket, you point to the player who threw the pass. He taught his team, and those who watched, that everyone is connected.
Inside the big Carolina family, he built a smaller family — the players and coaches and staffers who came to see him as a teacher, a guru, a role model, a surrogate dad. They asked his advice on everything from sneaker contracts to marriages. He called on their birthdays and got tickets for their in-laws. He built lifelong bonds.
But for the past seven years, maybe more, dementia has drawn the curtains closed on Dean Smith’s mind. Now he is 83 and almost no light gets out. He has gone from forgetting names to not recognizing faces to often looking at his friends and loved ones with empty stares.
Here is the special cruelty of it: The connector has become disconnected. The man who held the family together has broken off and drifted away. He is a ghost in clothes, dimmed by a disease that has no cure. Even the people closest to him sometimes slip into the past tense: Coach Smith was. They can’t help it. They honor him with what amounts to an open-ended eulogy. At the same time, they keep looking for a crack in the curtains. They do what people do when faced with the longest goodbye. They do the best they can.
Three times a week, a caregiver wheels Dean Smith into the Dean Smith Center. He still has a little office in the arena built in his name. Linnea thinks the routine is good for him. Linda Woods, his administrative assistant since 1977, answers his calls and checks his mail. She writes back I’m sorry to autograph seekers. Woods is retired except for Dean. When he’s there, she’s there. Dean often eats lunch at the office. He loved the double BLTs from down the road at Merritt’s Store & Grill. But these days he eats soft things in small pieces. On the good days, he feeds himself.
When he coached, his office was a disaster: “I had files,” Woods says, “and he had piles.” Now it’s mostly the golf magazines and the picture books. Woods turns the pages with him. You played that course with your friends, she’ll say. Or: Look at all that dark hair you had on your head.
She never asks if he remembers.
