Pat Smith is hard to categorize. And he’s damn proud of it.

He’s a white man who considers a black family in Detroit his closest kin.

He made a career in the world of computers, but he’s a right-brain kind of guy. He’s written a book, published a poetry magazine, plays jazz, draws and otherwise seeks the transcendent.

About the only box he fits neatly in is “Ann Arborite.” He loves the city and makes a conscious effort to take advantage of all it has to offer. He wouldn’t think of living anywhere else.

Pat grew up in Detroit and lived the life that society expected of young men in the 60s. That is, until he was drafted in 1966 and shipped off to Vietnam. That changed everything. “The war was wrong. I was just afraid to say ‘no,’” he says of his service.

It’s like he decided to never acquiesce again. He joined the Young Socialist Alliance after leaving the service. He remains a hybrid-driving liberal right down to his flannel shirts and cut-off blue jeans, and he loves to talk about politics and social issues. Don’t get him started on what went wrong with Detroit unless you’ve got an hour or two.

On the other hand, he loves meeting people and making new friends and hearing your views on the world. He lets you know he’s listening by throwing in an occasional “yep, yep” in a very Midwestern kind of way.

He went to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse on the GI Bill and got married in ’69, but the marriage fell apart after the couple moved to Tucson. Busted and alone and far from home, he pawned his wife’s wedding ring — yep, his wife’s — and made his way back east to move in with the Koyton family in Detroit, whom he’d known back in high school.

When he arrived he had $3 and half a pack of cigarettes to his name. “Big Pat” Koyton, the patriarch, got Pat a job at Allen Industries, since closed, where Pat walked to work every day. He was the only white in the neighborhood.

“They rescued me,” Pat says of the Koyton family. He reveres them to this day; he named his daughter, Felecia, after the Koytons’ youngest.

He gradually got his life together, not coincidentally about the time he met his current wife, Marla, in 1974. They married in 1976, and she’s been his rock ever since.

Pat eventually took some computer classes and ended up in Ann Arbor in 1980 working at what was then called the University of Michigan’s Data Systems Center, where he wrote the first version of Wolverine Access, along with a fellow programmer.

He knew shortly after arriving in town that he would put down roots.

“I was a programmer because it was a job. I was good at it but I never really liked it,” he says. “Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan put me in touch with all the other things I wanted to do.”

Turns out, that list of “other things” never stops growing.

He and Marla published Notus, a magazine focusing on avant-garde poetry, short fiction and translations, from 1985-93.

He learned to play the stand-up bass and joined a jazz band, the Ron Nannie Quartet. He so immersed himself in that scene that he ended up helping write the curriculum for Michigan State’s jazz studies program.

Arthritis recently put the quietus on his bass-playing, so Pat now takes art classes from Heather Accurso at the Ann Arbor Art Center. Another opportunity seized.

And so it goes. He and Marla recently spent a month in Paris, but not before auditing a U-M art history class, taught by Howard Lay, on French modernism.

A few months back, Nicola’s Books hosted a book-signing for “Hard Pill to Swallow,” which Pat published last year based loosely on people and places in Ann Arbor. Nicola’s had to bring in extra chairs for the event because so many people showed up to lend support.

It was an eclectic mix of artists, musicians, writers and family. There might have even been a computer geek or two. And Pat was right in his element.

“I love to poke fun at the fact that Ann Arbor takes itself too seriously, ” Pat says, “but we’re not going anywhere.”

And why would he? He’s got just the inquisitive mind that the city was built around.

Kyle Poplin is publisher of The Ann magazine, which is inserted monthly in various print editions of AnnArbor.com. (The next issue is coming out June 30.) He’s also searching, through this column, for the most interesting person in Ann Arbor. If you have anyone in mind, email your idea to theannmag@gmail.com.