Olympic Ticket Chief Smith to Move Up

Peter Ueberroth is gone to baseball, Harry L. Usher is going to football, and the last operational chief of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee--now down to about 80 employees--apparently is going to be the low-key, rather shy director of Olympic tickets, G. Edward Smith. Olympic board Chairman Paul Ziffren said Wednesday that he will submit Smith’s name to LAOOC directors when they meet Feb. 11. A check of board members showed that all factions approve of Smith, 48, who long ago established a reputation for integrity, efficiency and hard work in developing the elaborate computer system whereby the Olympic committee sold nearly 7 million tickets. “Ed Smith has been with the LAOOC since we began,” Ziffren said. “He will make a mutually agreeable leader to wind up the affairs of the committee. We have a lot of confidence in him.” The Olympic board chairman also announced that the 17-member executive board of the LAOOC’s foundation, the group that will control a $100-million fund to support youth sports in Southern California, will meet Saturday to determine the foundation’s organization and first steps. Mayor Tom Bradley recently was elected to this board. Ziffren said he expects to hold a press conference Monday to announce the foundation’s first project. In the meantime, he said, he is appointing Howard Allen, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Southern California Edison, to head a search committee that will look for a professional to become the foundation’s executive director. The two other members of the search committee--which Ziffren said will retain an executive search firm to assist it--are Maureen Kindel, Los Angeles Board of Public Works chief, and accountant Gilbert R. Vasquez. Scheduled to appear at Saturday’s session of the board of directors is Stanton Wheeler, a Yale University professor who teaches a course called “Sports and the Law,” and is an expert on the formation of foundations. Other experts, including Eugene R. Wilson, executive director of the Atlantic Richfield Foundation, also will attend. Smith, as last operational chief of the LAOOC, is not expected to have anything to do with the foundation. Its only employee at the moment is Daniel Cruz, the LAOOC’s director of youth programs, who is staying in touch with corporations that sponsored the LAOOC’s youth activities in order to determine their willingness to add their support to the foundation’s programs. It is expected that the foundation will forgo spending all of its $100 million at once. Instead, it will be structured to spend only part of its interest income.