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Douglas Smith was born on July 28, 1927, in Mulberry, Tennessee. His father John was 36 and his mother, Sallie, was 38. He is listed on the 1930 Census living with his older half brother, Charlie, and sisters Gladys, Hulda, Estelle and Ruth in Civil district 5, Lincoln County, Tennessee.

When Doug was in high school in the early 1940s, John Edgar, his father, became ill, and subsequently bedridden in 1943. He was ultimately diagnosed with kidney disease (likely related to alcoholism, obesity, smoking and general poor health). John Paul, the youngest sibling, leaves a nice 18 page Memoir of his recollections of growing up in Mulberry. He recalls that, in 1943, Hulda, Doug’s sister, had married Henry Carbine that and they were living in Chattanooga with their new daughter, Charlotte Oline. Henry was drafted into the Army for WWII and deployed. Hulda, a practicing nurse, moved to Mulberry with Charlotte to help her mother care for her father, as they had no income, and could not afford to put him into a hospital. One day during their stay, Charlotte was running a fever and Hulda called the doctor (likely Dr. Eugene Fletcher Holland, a Mulberry physician who cared for their sister Johnie Jewel when she became ill and died as an infant in 1925). He came by and diagnosed her with Scarlet Fever, and quarantined the home and occupants for 3 weeks. Doug was a junior in High School at the time, and only a month from completing the year. Realizing that he would not likely pass the school year, and have to repeat it if he missed 3 weeks, the doctor made an exception for Doug and allowed him to continue school as long as he had no contact with the rest of the family for the 3 weeks of the quarantine. The rest of the family could not leave the house for 3 weeks!

Doug graduated high school in 1944. At some point about 1951 or 1952 John Paul writes that Douglas met and married Barbara Ann Stevens. About the same time, he was was drafted into the Army, and sent to Germany. This separation apparently taxed their marriage, and they divorced shortly after his return before having children.

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His death certificate states that he was a veteran of the 1950 – 1953 Korean Conflict [it isn’t clear that he actually served in Korea at this writing]. John Paul writes that he (John Paul) moved to Chattanooga to get a job in 1953, when he graduated from high school. Once there, he met up with Doug, who was living in Chattanooga at the time (Barbara was also in Chattanooga finishing nursing school, as was older sister Hulda) and and they got an apartment together on McCallie Ave. In his Memoir, John Paul notes went through 3 jobs while in Chattanooga, before deciding to enlist in the Air Force, and states, ” So, on Jan 4, 1954, I joined Estelle and Joe in serving my country” (he interestingly doesn’t mention Doug, who had already been in and out of the Army by now).

Doug had one daughter with Dorothy Jean Childress in 1954. [This was discovered throughn DNA technology in 2018 by his daughter, Viki Smith Juzwiak, substantiated with comparative DNA from Barbara Catherine Smith (Douglas) and Elizabeth Anne Smith (Joe Waggoner Smith). It is thought by Viki that Doug never knew of her existence].

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Doug married Audrey Louise Crye Rickett on August 4, 1955. They lived in Rossville, Georgia and had two children – Barbara Catherine (1956) and David Douglas (1957).

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Doug became sick in 1960, spending 9 months in the Veterans Hospital in Oteen, North Carolina. He passed away there as the result of multiple metastatic carcinoma on 19 Sep, 1961 at the young age of 34. He was buried in Rossville, GA.

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