Joyce Whitfield Smith

After graduation in May, I married Tommy Smith in June. We will celebrate 62 years this June. I worked part time jobs in bookkeeping (Ms. Maddox would be proud) while raising our kids. I took a few classes at Clayton Junior College to get a better job in the accounting field. We lived all over the Atlanta area. Me and my brothers and sisters (June, class of 58, Geraldine(deceased 2010), class of 59, Ernest class of 61, myself, class of 62, Glenn, class of 66 (deceased 2020) and David, class of 71) lost our dad in 1978 to lung cancer at the age of 59. We moved that year from Riverdale to the northeast Georgia mountains. We built "our little shack" in the woods with our 4 hands. We only had to sub out a few things. Our little shack has about 1000 square feet near the Chattachoochee River on 29 acres. It is a little bit of heaven. I continued to work in Atlanta after moving up here for a few years. I worked at Egleston Children's Hospital as a Assistant Financial Analysist. I drove round trip about 140 a day. I left for a few years (when Becky had the twins) and returned a few years later and worked there until 1996. I loved the job, but the trip became too much. I went to work in the accounts payable department of Northeast Georgia Medical Center and worked there for several years. I then went to work at a funeral home. I I retired from Barrett Funeral Home in 2010.. My husband retired from the hospital and 2015. We enjoy working on our family tree. We have over 32,000 names in our tree. We work hard in making sure that we have good records before we place a name in our tree. I enjoy doing all kind of "activities" with the great grandchildren. We just built a new home next to our daughter in Homer, GA and moved in in December 2022. Just enjoying growing old together and growing in our faith.

We just celebrated our 62th wedding anniversary in June and have just received news that our family is still growing. We will have a 10th great grandchild in March 2023. They now have 3 girls so we can wait to hear if the sweet little one is a another girl or a boy. The girls are currently ahead of the boys, 7 girls and 3 boys. We now have a gggrandson.

I loved my years at CPHS. By having so many brothers and sisters in school, we know almost everybody. I loved going to the friday night football games ( I am still a big football fan) and going to the dances after. I was also invited to a lot of the GMA dances (I loved to dance). I remember walking down the hall at CPHS. I was not quite 5" tall and some of the basketball players looked like giants. Some of them called me "peanut". One of those guys was Bill Curry.

June Elaine class of 1958 (deceased)
Geraldine Juniata class of 1959 (deceased)
Ernest Lee Jr class of 1961 (deceased)
Glenn Edward class of 1966 (deceased)
David Michael class of 1971