When Joe Waggoner Smith was born on February 28, 1930, in Mulberry, Lincoln County, Tennessee, his father, John Edgar, was 39 and his mother, Sallie, was 40. He had an older step brother, Jared (1903), who was married to Ena and living in Chattanooga, as well as an older half-brother, Charlie (1909), who was still at home, working in a general merchandise store. He also had 4 sisters – Gladys (1916), Hulda (1918), Estelle (1920) and Ruth (1922). A sister, Johnnie Jewel, had been born on New Year’s Eve, 1924, but died following surgery on an intestinal blockage just before Christmas and her first birthday in 1925. Douglas, a brother, had been born in 1927. On the 1930 census, they are all living with their mother and father in Mulberry, Tennessee.

John “Bull” Smith, Joe’s father, is listed as a livestock trader on the census. This, of course, was during The Great Depression years. John Edgar and his brother, Haskell Columbus Smith opened a small country grocery store during the depression years. Although the business ultimately failed, people in Mulberry credited his father and uncle with helping them get through the Great Depression years by giving them food on credit, which they likely knew they would never likely get payment for.

Joe’s sister, Barbara Ann was born in 1932, and John Paul, the youngest Smith sibling, was born in 1935. Like all of his siblings, Joe went to school in Mulberry. The 1940 Census shows that the family is still in Lincoln County Civil District 5, and records that they are in the same house that they were living in in 1935, which was just off the town square in Mulberry. At this point, Ruth (17) is a junior in high school, Doug (12) is in 7th grade, Joe (10), 5th grade, Barbara (7) 2nd grade, John Paul is 5 and not yet in school. Jared and Ena are living in Detroit, Michigan. In Chattanooga, Charlie is married to Alice Reeve and is in Law School, Gladys is married to Frank Cummings, Hulda has completed nursing school and working as a nurse, and Estelle is in nursing school at Baroness Erlanger School of Nursing.

John Paul left a wonderful Memoir of his early years in Mulberry. He records that, 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 the Pacific 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 Paul recorded this memory of Joe during this time: Another very special memory I have while Hulda was living with us was our family support for the country. Camp Forest, a U.S. Army Camp, was located approximately 25 miles from Mulberry and many times soldiers were on maneuver in the wooded areas around Mulberry. One evening, Joe brought in a loaf of bread and some fresh eggs and asked Hulda if she would help him make egg sandwiches for the soldiers that were on maneuvers in the area. Hulda was more than happy to do what she could to help. It was probably good for her and she felt in some small way she was helping Henry fight the war. Anyway, Joe only had a few sandwiches, but when he started passing them out to the soldiers, they started giving him money. He would immediately go to the store and get more bread and eggs and have Hulda make more sandwiches. Needless to say, it was a long night and even though I didn’t help much, it was a night that I will never forget.

John Edgar’s health worsened, and he died at home on Nov 3, 1943. Only 3 weeks after his death, the family home that they had rented was sold out beneath them. Sallie, recently windowed 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. The small 3-room house 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.”.

Sallie’s nephew, Edgar Hazelwood, let the family (plus Hulda and Charlotte…7 of them!) live in the home rent-free. John Paul recalls, “At this time, Hulda was still with us. She sat us all down and explained that we were living here rent free and that anything Edgar needed us to do to help out on the farm, we were to do it. Although I remember Joe and I both working in the barn, feeding the cattle or shucking corn, for which we were not supposed to take money, Edgar would insist that he pay us.”

Just before John’s death, Estelle had filed for legal guardianship of her mother and 4 younger siblings. The older working siblings worked hard to insure the younger ones continued in school, at 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, as the oldest sibling at home, got his own room in the new house.

Joe graduated from Fayetteville Central High School in 1947. He enlisted in the US Air Force in 1948 “on a $5.00 bet that I wouldn’t,” he later said. He initially was a B-29 turret mechanic, rising to a B-29 tail gunner during the Korean War. He flew 28 combat missions over Korea as a tail gunner, and an additional 50 missions as an F-94B radar observer. He was awarded the Air Force’s “Distinguished Flying Cross” for his brave actions over Korea during a combat patrol on the night of June 24, 1953.

That very same of that very same year (1953), on the other side of the world, his younger sister Barbara was finishing nursing school at Erlanger in Chattanooga. Barbara’s nursing school roommate was Bertha Rollings. A beauty from Grundy County, Tennessee, she had graduated from Grundy County High School in 1950, where her grandfather was the County Judge and Superintendent of Schools.

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Like Barbara, Bert had also decided to go to nursing school at Erlanger. She and Barbara were roommates and became best friends. They wore each others clothes, traveled together, wrote poems to each other and dated together.

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It isn’t clear when Joe happened to meet Bert, but an attraction developed that was clearly mutual, and they were married July 26, 1956.

Joe was still in the Air Force. He and Bert had a daughter, Elizabeth Anne in 1958, and a son, Richard Frank, in 1959. His career took him and the family all over the world, to include a 2 1/2 year tour in Greece.

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Joe spent 24 years in the Air Force, rising from through the ranks from Private to Lieutenant Colonel, Joe retired from the Air Force in 1971. The family moved back to Lincoln County, living in Fayetteville. He worked first for the Fayetteville Police Department as an investigator, and then as a Coordinator for the Fayetteville Police and Fire Departments, helping to organize their record keeping, and improving communications between the County, State and Federal levels of law enforcement.

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He then went to college to finish his degree, starting off at University of Alabama, Huntsville, and completing his BS degree in Education from Alabama A&M University in Huntsville.

He took a job at Amana Refrigeration in 1976 as their director of training.

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In September 1976, he was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a terminal brain tumor. He died on January 18, 1977, in Fayetteville, Tennessee, at the age of 46.

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He died on January 18, 1977, in Fayetteville, Tennessee, at the age of 46.