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Lifelong resident supports community
Kim Johnson - Thu, Jul, 24, 2008
Mona Isbell Smith, right, has found the perfect place to display her pride in the Farragut and Concord communities — as a new member of the Farragut Folklife Museum Committee.
“I have lived in the Farragut community all my life, except recently. We just retired and moved to my husband’s family’s farm.
“I went to Farragut schools all 12 years and graduated from there. I married my high school sweetheart, Ed, and he tells people that he has loved me since I was 16 years-old,” Smith said.
Since retiring from Science Applications International Corporation as a computer systems analyst and manger of software quality assurance five years ago, Smith has been an even more active member of the community.
She is an active member of the recently renamed First Baptist Concord Kingston Pike and spents a good amount of time volunteering there.
“I feel like God has blessed me and I was able to retire early. I would just like to leave this place a little better than I found it, so I enjoy doing volunteer work. I work with the church wherever they need me,” she said.
Smith recently completed a book on the history of FBC entitled “From Founders to the Future,” and is currently working on her second book “Once a Man Twice a Child,” an informational book for the caretakers of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
“My father, [Roger Allen Isbell], had Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease and I cared for him as long as I could before he fell and broke a hip. There were so many things I learned in caring for him. And then people would come to me and say, ‘How did you handle this?’ or ‘Did your father have this symptom or that symptom?’ and so I saw that there was a need to share,” she said.
“These are things that I have learned that I thought somebody else could benefit from,” she added.
Smith, who is a five-year breast cancer survivor, also is active with a breast cancer survival group at FBC.
“Whenever life throws you a curve, or what we call a bend in the road, people will look for other people who have had these problems.
“I think when God gives you a bend in the road he tests you. He tests your strength and your Christian faith and he would like for us, I am sure, to help others.
“Maybe I can help others through my experience and help them get over their rough spot. That is what I think the good Lord would want us to do,” she said.
Smith said she was invited to join the FFM committee and enjoys the work she is involved in.
“I think they looked around for people that were old and knew something about the history, and I was raised in this area,” she laughingly said.
Smith has been involved in the museum’s FBI exhibit, is the publisher of the newsletter and currently is working on an exhibit on General Robert Neyland, the legendary football coach at The University of Tennessee for whom Neyland Stadium is named.
“Andy Kozar, who was a fullback for U-T in 1952, has this amazing collection of things that belonged to Gen. Neyland He has his diary, and things you wouldn’t believe. We are going through all of his things and of course we do not have enough space to show everything but we are pulling out the things we think would be the most interesting. That is what I am working on right now,” she said.
Though her various activities keep her busy, Smith would not have it any other way.
“I am not a soap opera person. I would go back to work if all I had to do was sit around and watch soaps.
“My husband teases me. He says ‘where did you find time to do all this before?’ and I didn’t. I worked twelve- and fourteen-hour days when I worked, but it was not stuff I necessarily wanted to do. I said, ‘When I retire I am going to do stuff I want to do.’”
Read future issues of farragutpress for the remainder of this series of profiles on the other new members of Farrgut Folklife Museum Committee, Loretta Bradley and John Hoffman.
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