At 91, Harry Smith Died in a Cleveland VA Hospital. His Story Will Break Your Heart

Harry "Tiger" Smith was one of the three greatest bowlers in the world in the late 1950s and early 1960s — standing alongside Don Carter and Dick Weber at the absolute peak of professional bowling. He was a charter member of the PBA, one of the 33 men who put up $50 each to build the organization from nothing. He won 12 PBA titles, two major championships, and was inducted into two Halls of Fame. In 1963, he led qualifying rounds every single week of the Winter Tour — and never got credit for it because the format reset the score before the cameras turned on. He invented power bowling decades before anyone called it that. He died at 91 in a Cleveland VA hospital, buried in a small private ceremony next to his mother, with almost no one outside the bowling world knowing his name. This is the full story of Harry Monroe Smith — the Tiger from Burton, Ohio, who walked sideways to the line, threw the ball harder than anyone thought possible, and somehow never became the household name he deserved to be.