Cole and Savannah LaBrant are well-known family influencers. On their YouTube channel, The LaBrant Fam, they talk about their lives as parents of two children (formerly branded as Cole&Sav).
Some people know that Everleigh is not Cole’s child, even though the couple got married in 2017. Cole is Savannah’s first husband, but she had her daughter Everleigh with a man she used to date. Who is Tommy Smith, her ex-boyfriend? And what’s been going on with him lately?
Savannah has been very honest about her past on her YouTube channel. She has said that getting married to Cole was not an easy road. Savannah got pregnant with Everleigh when she was only 19. This was before she became famous on the Internet and met the other influencer. She was in college at the time, but she dropped out to have her baby with Tommy Smith, who was then her boyfriend.
“I was in a very bad relationship with her dad,” Savannah said in a video called “The truth about Savannah’s past.” “I got pregnant at 19 years old, came out of a bad relationship before that, met her dad, got pregnant pretty quickly, and it was just kind of bad, always fighting, always crazy… It was just a very very toxic relationship.”
People shared a part of the family’s book, Cole & Sav: Our Surprising Love Story, in which Savannah talked about how bad her relationship with Everleigh’s biological father was. Tommy cheated on her more than once, both while she was pregnant with Everleigh and after she was born. She also said that the relationship was unhealthy as a whole.
She wrote, “I wasn’t a happy person.” “In the videos Everleigh and I made on musical.ly, I acted happy, but I wasn’t really happy. My family saw how unhappy I was, and my mom told me she and her friends always prayed for me to leave him.
Savannah didn’t decide to leave Everleigh until he was three years old.
She said, “I was just sick of it and starting to understand what I deserved.”
What happened to kill Tommy Smith?
Even though Tommy and Savannah seemed to be getting along well as co-parents, that all changed when Tommy’s sister, Amber Smith, told Savannah on September 13, 2022 that Tommy had died suddenly. At this time, Tommy’s family has not said what killed him.
Amber wrote in a heartbreaking Facebook post, “His love for living life to the fullest and his free spirit will be greatly missed.”
Courtney, who has been dating Tommy for a long time, also made a tribute post on Instagram. She wrote, “You were taken to be with Jesus on September 22 without warning. My heart is breaking into a million pieces as I write this.”
Courtney added, “I know you’re dancing and making jokes in heaven now. I love you so much, Tommy. You’ll always have a special place in my heart.”
Savannah wrote a tribute to Tommy on Instagram. She said, “Our hearts are so heavy as we deal with the loss of Everleigh’s dad, Tommy. He loved Everleigh so much. As we go through this hard time, we ask for privacy so that our family can continue to love on Ev, pray for her, and grieve with her. Your prayers for Everleigh are so very much appreciated.”
Early years and work
Tommie Smith was born in Clarksville, Texas, on June 6, 1944. He was the seventh child of Richard and Dora Smith’s twelve children. As a child, he had pneumonia, but he still grew up to be a good athlete. Smith showed a lot of promise when he went to Lemoore High School in Lemoore, California. He set most of the school’s track records, many of which still stand. He won the 440-yard dash at the 1963 CIF California State Meet. He was voted Lemoore’s “Most Valuable Athlete” in basketball, football, and track and field. He was also voted vice president of his senior class. His accomplishments earned him a scholarship to San José State University.
On May 7, 1966, while he was a student at San Jose State, Smith ran the 200m straight in 19.5 seconds on a cinder track.[8] On May 16, 2010, Tyson Gay broke that record for the 200m, but Smith still holds the record for the slightly longer 220-yard event. Since the IAAF has stopped approving records for this event, Smith will always hold the record for the straightaway 200m/220 yards.
A few weeks later, on June 11, 1966, Smith became the first person to run 200 meters and 220 yards around a turn in 20 seconds. He won the NCAA Men’s Outdoor Track and Field Championship six days after that. In 1967, Smith also won the national collegiate 220-yard (201.17 m) and AAU furlong (201.17 m) titles. He went to Japan for the Summer Universiade in 1967 and won the gold medal in the 200m. In 1968, he won the AAU 200m title for the second time and made the Olympic team.
The Summer Olympics in 1968
Before the Olympics, people in the U.S. At the Olympic Trials in Echo Summit, California, Smith’s teammate John Carlos ran 19.92A to beat Smith and his world record. John Carlos’ record was taken away because he was wearing shoes with brush spikes. Vince Matthews’ 400-meter record was also taken away for the same reason.
As a member of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), Smith wanted to boycott the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City unless four things happened: South Africa and Rhodesia were kicked out of the Olympics, Muhammad Ali’s world heavyweight boxing title was restored, Avery Brundage stepped down as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and more African-American assistant coaches were hired. After the IOC pulled invitations for South Africa and Rhodesia, the boycott didn’t get enough support, so he and Carlos decided to not only wear their gloves, but also go barefoot to protest poverty, wear beads to protest lynchings, and wear OPHR buttons.
Smith ran the 200-meter final at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico with an injured groin. During the race, Carlos took the lead around the first turn, while Smith got off to a slow start. After the turn, Smith sped past Carlos and quickly won the race. He had passed his training partner and his closest competitor, so he knew he had won. He raised his arms 10m before the finish line to celebrate. Still, he beat his own world record, which lasted until Pietro Mennea beat it on the same track 11 years later. Smith’s time of 19.83 was one of the first world records for the event that were automatically timed and recorded by the IAAF.
Carlos and Smith’s black-gloved fist-raising at the medal ceremony made news all over the world. Both athletes stood on the podium without shoes and black socks to show how poor African-American people are in the United States. Peter Norman, an Australian athlete who won a silver medal and was white, took part in the protest by wearing an OPHR badge.
IOC president Avery Brundage thought it was a domestic political statement that didn’t belong at the Olympics, which were meant to be a nonpolitical international event. Because of what they did, he told Smith and Carlos to leave the US team and not come back to the Olympic Village. When the US Olympic Committee said no, Brundage said the whole US track team would be banned. The two athletes were kicked out of the Games because of this threat.
A spokesman for the IOC said that what Smith and Carlos did was “a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit.” When he was president of the USOC in 1936, Brundage didn’t say anything about Nazi salutes at the Berlin Olympics. He said that the Nazi salute, which was a national salute at the time, was okay in a competition between countries, but the athletes’ salute was not from a country and so was not okay.
Smith and Carlos got in trouble for questioning the authority of white people in the U.S. Ralph Boston, a black U.S. long jumper at the 1968 games, said, “The rest of the world didn’t seem to find it so insulting. They thought it was very positive. Only America thought it was bad.” The men’s gesture had lasting effects on all three athletes, with death threats against Smith, Carlos, and their families being the most serious. After being banned by the IOC, they had trouble making money.
Smith said in later years, “We were worried about how few black assistant coaches there were, how Muhammad Ali’s title was taken away, how hard it was to find good housing, and how our kids couldn’t go to the best colleges.”
Tommie Smith in Stockholm, 1966
During his career, Smith set seven individual world records and was on several relay teams at San Jose State that set world records. His coach there was Lloyd (Bud) Winter. Smith still ranks high on the world’s all-time lists, with personal records of 10.1 for 100 meters, 19.83 for 200 meters, and 44.5 for 400 meters.
Smith was picked up by the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League in the ninth round of the 1967 NFL Draft. He then signed with the Cincinnati Bengals of the American Football League and played wide receiver for the team for most of three seasons. He played in two games during the 1969 season and caught one pass for 41 yards.
Smith got his BA in Social Science from San Jose State University a year after he won the Olympics. He then went on to get his master’s in Social Change from Goddard College, where he was able to use his teaching and writing skills in his coursework.
He ran track and played football, and in 1978, he was inducted into the United States National Track and Field Hall of Fame. In 1996, Smith was inducted into the California Black Sports Hall of Fame. In 1999, he was given the Sportsman of the Millennium Award by the same group. In 2000 and 2001, the County of Los Angeles and the State of Texas gave Smith commendation, recognition, and proclamation awards.
Later, he became a track coach at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he also taught sociology. From 2003 to 2005, he was on the faculty at Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, where he taught physical education.
Temple University Press came out with Smith’s autobiography, Silent Gesture, in 2007. In August 2008, he gave one of his shoes from the 1968 Olympics to Usain Bolt of Jamaica, who won three gold medals at the 2008 Olympics.
Smith sold his gold medal and spikes at an auction in 2010. The first bid was for $250,000, and the sale was set to end on November 4, 2010. In 2013, Goddard College gave Smith the Presidential Award for Activism as a way to thank him for his work there.