When Barbara Ann Smith was born on October 16, 1932, in Mulberry, Tennessee, her father, John Edgar, was 41, and her mother, Sallie, was 43. The family is listed on the 1930 Census as living in Civil District 5 of Lincoln County [Barbara’s youngest sibling, John Paul, was born 3 years later in the “Norman House” in Mulberry, so this is likely where they were living when Barbara was born]. At the time of her birth, she had 7 older siblings living at home with her parents – Half-brother Charlie (1909), Gladys (1916), Hulda (1918), Estelle (1920), Ruth (1922), Douglas (1927), and Joe (1930). Another sister, Johnnie Jewel, had been born on New Year’s Eve, 1924, but died just before Christmas and her first birthday, following surgery for an intestinal blockage. An older step-brother, Jared, was married to Ena, and had 2-year-old Evelyn, living in Chattanooga, so Sallie, at 43, when Barbara was born, was already Granny Smith!

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Barbara grew up in Mulberry and attended school there. John Paul, Barbara’s youngest brother, left us a wonderful 18-page Memoir of his early years in Mulberry. In that, he writes of an adult neighbor who was deathly afraid of thunderstorms would have young “Barkie” (the neighbor’s nickname for her which John Paul says he and Barbara both despised) come stay with her for company during a storm. John Paul notes that this is his earliest recollection of Barbara’s love of helping people.

On the 1940 Census, she is listed as a 7-year-old 2nd grader, and living with her parents, younger brother, John Paul (5), and older siblings Joe (10), Doug (12) and Ruth (17), still in Civil District 5 of Lincoln County, Tennessee. The 1940 census queried whether families were in the same house that that were in in 1935, and the family replied “yes.” But John Paul recorded that he was born in the “Norman House” in 1935, and the family moved soon after that. That would indicate that the family had moved once since Barbara’s birth.

In 1941, John Edgar began to get sick, becoming completely bed-ridden in early 1943. He was suffering with kidney disease, although it is unclear whether he or any of the family knew what was making him sick. John Paul wrote that he later learned of his father’s problem with alcohol. Both John Paul and a cousin reflect in their writings that he was also quite overweight. These issues easily put him at risk for secondary illnesses like diabetes and hypertension, which can result in other issues, such as cirrhosis and renal failure. John Paul also recorded that he had trouble breathing towards the end (also a symptom of end stage renal failure and cirrhosis), and that he needed a small electric fan blowing on him so he could breathe.

It was the middle of WWII. In 1942, Hulda married Henry Charles Carbine, and they had their daughter, Charlotte Oline that October. Not long after that, Henry was drafted into the Army and sent to fight in WWII. So, in 1943, Hulda left her job as a nurse in Chattanooga and brought Charlotte to Mulberry to help her mother care for her father.

John Edgar’s health worsened, and he died at home on Nov 3, 1943. John Paul recorded, “On the morning of November 3rd, 1943, when I woke up, Barbara was standing by my bed and she said to me that she would tell me something if I wouldn’t cry. She told me that Dad had died during the night.”

Only 3 weeks after his death, Sallie was informed that the family home that they had rented had been sold out from beneath them. Sallie, recently widowed for the second time, with 4 school-aged children at home, and no income, was forced to move to an abandoned home on a nephew’s farm in Crystal Ridge, 4 miles and just above Mulberry. Hulda and Charlotte stayed on with them, so there were 7 of them that moved into the small 3-room house. It had no electricity, no running water, and was heated by a single wood stove. They used coal oil lamps to light it that winter, but John Paul wrote that “…we made out just fine.”

Just before John’s death, Estelle had filed for legal guardianship of her mother and 4 younger siblings. The older employed siblings worked hard to insure the younger ones continued in school, and that Ruth finished nursing school. They spent a year in the house on Crystal Ridge, while the older siblings were working to help them out. In late 1944, they purchased the “house-on-the-hill” in Mulberry. This home was owned by Cecil Johnson, the town’s assistant postmaster. John Paul talks about how excited they all were moving into this house that had electricity, running water and a telephone! Joe got his own room, and John Paul recalls that he and Barbara shared a room.

Joe joined the Air Force in 1948 after he graduated from High School, leaving only Barbara and John Paul at home. Barbara was a sophomore at Central High School in Fayetteville by this time, and John Paul was in 7th grade at The Mulberry School.

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Barbara graduated from Central High School in Fayetteville in 1950, and went on to nursing school at Baroness Erlanger School of Nursing in Chattanooga, following in the footsteps of 3 of her older sisters, Hulda, Estelle, and Ruth.

Her roommate in nursing school was Bertha Rollings, who, with the help of Barbara, would later meet and marry Barbara’s brother, Joe. Barbara and Bert were best friends, wore each others clothes, and traveled and dated together.

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She and Bert graduated from Nursing School in 1953. Barbara stayed on in Chattanooga working for Dr. Jones. Bert met Joe Waggoner, and they married in 1956.

In 1955, she met James Lundin Rungee in Chattanooga. She later wrote: Jim and I met approximately a year before we started dating – I was dating a fraternity brother of his at the time and we went to a swimming party. The only thing I remembered about it was coming home and telling Bert that “I met the cutest boy.” The thing he remembered was when we went back to the Pi Kappa Alpha House and he walked by where I was sitting and kicked my foot. He called me the next year for a date. It was July 19th and I had planned to have a dinner party for Bert (getting married the next Thursday). Well, he picked me up out at the Ranch House and we went to see “The King and I”. I remember I had on a black dress and he had on a gray suit with a red tie that I didn’t like but I really thought he was handsome. He kissed me on the first date and I liked it even then. We dated several times before he went back to Fort Bragg where he was stationed at the time. We didn’t get much courting in except by mail, and we wrote each other every day, sometimes two or three times a day. The second time he came home I was pretty sure he was for me but was afraid I just wanted to get married because Bert did. So many people had told me I would. Anyway, I was pretty sure when he went back that I could stand being with him the rest of my life. On October 16th (which was my birthday) he sent me a “paper of pins” (“The Bus Stop Song” had become our love song) and a dozen red roses. Oh, yes, he had proposed by this time. He didn’t write me one day and on September 18th when I didn’t get a letter from him I called him. It took three hours to get the call through, but when I did, he asked me! He says I didn’t even answer, but just said, “When??” I got my ring the 19th of September by mail where I worked. A beautiful emerald cut diamond. Then we were married on the 28th of December and have lived happily ever after, so far.

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They were married on December 28, 1956, in Cleveland, Tennessee. They were at Ft Bragg, North Carolina first, and then stationed at Ft Rucker, Alabama while Jim attend Flight School. They arrived there when Barbara was just over 8 months pregnant with their first child. Barbara later talked about how she called the Chamber of Commerce in Ozark, Alabama to get the name of an OB/GYN to follow her through the remainder of her pregnancy and deliver her. The woman she spoke with told her that the Chamber was not allowed to recommend specific doctors. So Barbara asked if she could at least tell her who her doctor was. She made an appointment with that doctor, who delivered her a month later.

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James Lundin Rungee, Jr, was born on September 24, 1957. He was a breech delivery, and Barbara didn’t find out until after the fact that the doctor she had been seeing was just a General Practitioner, and not an OB/GYN. It all worked out just fine. Joe and Bert came to visit shortly after the birth!

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After flight school, Jim Sr was assigned back to Ft Bragg, where their 2nd child, Julie Joyce Rungee, was born on February 17, 1959. Barbara called her mother about her new granddaughter, who responded with a letter a few days later. They had short assignments after that at Ft Bliss, Texas, and Fort Gordon, Georgia.

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Jim was then assigned to Korea. Barbara was pregnant with their 3rd child at the time, and lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee near Jim’s parents, Joe and Dollie Rungee, while Jim, Sr. was in Korea. Teresa Anne Rungee was born on January 30, 1960, while Jim was still in Korea.

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Jim returned from Korea, and the family lived in Ft Sill, Oklahoma and Ft Walters, Texas, before going back to Ft Bragg, NC. Then a longer 2-year assignment back at Ft Rucker, Alabama where Jim was assigned as a UH1 (“Huey”) Helicopter Instructor Pilot, and learned to fly the only fixed wing aircraft in the Army’s inventory at the time, the OV-1 Mohawk (aka “Widow-Maker”), from 1961 – 63.

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Jim Sr took great advantage of Army opportunities, and landed a job in Caracas, Venezuela, using his helicopter skills to help Venezuela map remote, vast uncharted areas of the Orinoco River Basin, known as “Los Llanos.” But before moving there, the family spent 8 months at Ft Ord, California in Language School, where Jim and Barbara learned Spanish.

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On to Caracas, Venezuela. It was to have been a 3-year assignment, but was cut short after a year and a half when Jim was tasked to help organize the first “Aviation Brigade” in the Army’s history, for deployment to Vietnam.

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So, to Fort Campbell, Kentucky for the 6 month organization, and then on to Vietnam.

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While Jim was in Vietnam, Barbara and the three children lived in Fayetteville, Tennessee, to be near Granny Smith and other Smith family.

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Jim’s 1-year tour in Vietnam began flying Hueys in support of US ground operations. Mid way through the assignment, he was re-assigned to the 73rd Surveillance Aviation Company, flying the “Widow-Maker” he had qualified in years before. His tour was extended for an additional 3 months, when he had the opportunity to serve as the 73rd SAC Commander.

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Jim, Sr got home safe and sound from Vietnam in 1968, and he was assigned to attend the Army’s year-long “Command and General Staff College” in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for a year.

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From there, Jim, Sr once again took advantage of opportunities in the Army, and managed to get assigned as an instructor at the Escuela Militar, in Santiago, Chile…the country’s equivalent of the United States’ West Point Military Academy. So in July, 1969, the family took off from an airport in in New Orleans in the middle of summer and landed 16 hours later in Santiago in the middle of winter, Chile being on the other side of the equator. The family lived in Chile for 3 years, and Barbara often referred to this era as “our Camelot years.” The family all learned to horseback ride, and took trips to visit other parts of Chile outside of Santiago.

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After Chile, Jim’s last assignment in the Army was as an ROTC instructor at Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It was nice to be back close to family. Jim Sr retired from the Army after 20 years, and became a realtor. Barbara went back to nursing, working for OB/GYN Dr. John Alexander at the Murfreesboro Medical Clinic. All three kids finished High School, and went on to college. All three married, giving Barbara and Jim 10 grandchildren over the course of 11 years. Both eventually finished their second jobs, and then left those to spend more time travelling and being grandparents.

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In 2003, Barbara was diagnosed with stage 3 Ovarian Cancer. Despite an ominous diagnosis, she pushed on with life, loving her family for another 8.5 years. Jim Sr was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease during those years as well. He and Barbara stayed in their Murfreesboro home of almost 40 years on Mercury Blvd, until Barbara had to go into the hospital in April of 2011, and subsequently into rehabilitation at Adam’s Place. Jim joined her there in Assisted Living. She passed away on August 26, 2011, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, at the age of 78, and was buried there.

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Jim lived on at Adam’s Place for another 5 years, and passed away peacefully on June 14, 2016.