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Rep. Bob Smith may be the chattiest guy down at the state Capitol.

And darned proud of it.

Elissa Eubanks/AJC (ENLARGE)

State Rep. Bob Smith (left), who wears two hearing aids and an FM receiver, is known for focusing in on a conversation, like this one with Rep. Lester Jackson (D-Savannah). He's also known as an advocate for others with hearing loss.

Elissa Eubanks/AJC (ENLARGE)

Advanced FM-based technology installed in the House chamber last year has significantly improved Rep. Bob Smith's ability to hear. An FM receiver tucked behind his tie works the magic.

STATE REP. BOB SMITH • Age: 55 • Affiliation: Republican, Watkinsville • Education: B.A., University of Georgia, 1976 • Profession: Commercial real estate • Personal: Wife, Laura, teaches first grade. Three children: Robert, a Georgia Tech graduate and architect; Matthew, a UGA senior, and Shearron, a UGA freshman • "Real World": Smith owns an Atlanta condo along with state Rep. Mark Burkhalter (R-Johns Creek) for when legislative days end too late or start too early. "It's Wacky World," said Burkhalter, House speaker pro tem. "Bob makes everyone smile and laugh. That can relieve the worst of days around here." RELATED LINKS: • More about this year's Legislature

"I can't hear anything, so I might as well just keep talking," the Republican from Watkinsville jokes.

You heard right: Smith, chairman of one of the most powerful subcommittees in the House and gladhander of governor, security guard and everyone in between, has a profound hearing impairment.

"If I take these out," he says, pointing to the hearing aids that nestle inside and behind both of his ears, "I'm about 75 percent gone."

He wouldn't dare risk it. It's not just that Smith, 55, is gregarious by nature. ("He's the most important person in the Capitol — just ask him," snickers good friend and fellow Rep. Jeff Lewis, a Republican from White.) The five-term House veteran also is making up for lost time.

After nearly a decade of having to work harder just to keep up, Smith last year took a big stride forward in what he is able to hear and do, thanks to some sophisticated advances in audio technology in the House chamber.

And he has no intention of going back.

"I don't want to miss anything," says Smith, who introduced a bill last year that could help make more of the same whiz-bang technology, based on FM radio transmission, affordable to others. Signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue in May, it also created a state commission on hearing-impaired and deaf persons. "I'm going to get right in your face and say, 'What did you say?' And then I might say it again."

With a mock groan, Rep. Mark Burkhalter (R-Johns Creek), speaker pro tem and another close pal, attests to this: "He's a pretty persistent guy about everything. Even though you're tired of hearing him talk about one of his passions for three hours, he'll go right back and talk about it for a fourth."

Determination to spare

Burkhalter might just be jealous, since nobody ever got ahead in politics by being shy and retiring. Nor can a disability hold back any legislator who's determined enough. Just ask New York Gov. David A. Paterson, who succeeded Eliot Spitzer on Monday to become that state's first blind governor.

While his accomplishments are similarly impressive, the man from Watkinsville is quick to point out that "a story about Bob Smith" is less important than one about how many people have hearing impairments and how much could be done to help them.

Still, there may be few harder places to work than the state Capitol, where vast arched ceilings and marble floors that magnify the constant chatter and footsteps can make it hard for anyone to hear, much less think. And politics, of course, is all about the art of listening. You'd think Smith would be at a disadvantage. But then you see him energetically buttonholing fellow House members or leaning in close to hear out some citizen in the hallway for 10 minutes, and you think again.

"He has a way of listening with his eyes and his ears," Lewis says. "I think when you suffer from a disability, you develop some fine-tuned abilities that us so-called 'normal' folks never do."

Healthy sense of humor

That only partly explains Smith's popularity in the General Assembly. In a place where some people have less personality than the paper their legislation is printed on, Smith is notably fun to be around — and not just because he likes to dispense James Madison dollar coins as part of an impromptu civics quiz.

Ask around, and you hear story after story about his sense of humor, which includes a willingness to laugh at himself. He never gets what he ordered in a restaurant, for instance — not if his lawmaker pals can help it. And one long day last week he had to leave the Capitol in his stockinged feet — someone had hidden one of his shoes in a refrigerator.

"I'm the brunt of the jokes up here," says Smith, who sounds absolutely delighted about it. "They pick on me because they know I'll laugh."

Yet those same jokesters also select quiet restaurants on designated "Bob Nights," he says. And he's "lost count" of the times Burkhalter or others quietly appeared at his elbow in the well of the House to help him follow the verbal back-and-forth, especially before the chamber's audio technology improved.

Smith's hearing impairment occurred around second or third grade. His parents thought drugs given to him for an illness, like mumps, might have caused it.

"A real myth is that hearing impairment is most identified with aging people," says Dr. Helena Solodar of Audiological Consultants of Atlanta, where Smith has been a patient for years. In fact, a "huge percentage" of the over 30 million Americans affected by some degree of hearing loss are between ages 35 and 60, she said.

To Solodar, Smith is "an unbelievable advocate. For others with hearing loss, and for himself — for knowing his limitations as far as his hearing goes, and being very receptive to do whatever it takes to improve it. That's unique, because people sometimes identify [hearing loss] with being inadequate or not as intelligent."

Following the argument

Nothing could have appeared further from the truth when Smith chaired a recent meeting of the Appropriations Committee's Higher Education subcommittee. For 30 minutes, as experts reported on ways to expand medical education in Georgia, Smith listened as closely as an intern about to perform a self-appendectomy. When someone cited all that Pittsburgh had done to become the nation's No. 4 center for medical education, Smith pounced.

"What is it going to take for us to become No. 1?" he asked.

Before, Smith says, he used to speak out on the House floor only when he was fairly certain he wouldn't get a lot of questions flying at him from all over the big chamber. Then last year, FM-based technology installed there significantly improved his ability to hear. He wears an FM receiver behind his tie, along with his hearing aids. The technology lags elsewhere in the Capitol, but he's not complaining. He's too busy speaking up.

During a typically hectic meeting of the Rules committee, Smith posed question after question of the legislators lined up to plead for their bills.

"I've jokingly asked him, 'Are you finally reading the bills?'" said Lewis, adding, in what has to be music to Smith's ears: "I only say nice things about him behind his back."