Bob Smyth was born in Gleason on August 28, 1902, the son of Clint Smyth and Theodocia Brogden Smyth. When they married, Clint (a widower) and Theodocia (a widow) had five children from their earlier marriages. Their marriage produced four more children, making a household of nine children ranging in age, at one point, from one to 19. They lived on East Grove Road, formerly known, not surprisingly, as Smyth Street.

In 1918, at the age of 16, Bob started working for Dr. Ammons in Ammons Pharmacy on Front Street, thereby beginning a lifetime association with drugstores. Above the drugstore was the Gleason Opera House where stage plays were performed and movies shown. His work with Dr. Ammons must have proven congenial because Bob went on to complete his pharmacy training in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1928. Four years later he married Lucille Cochran, a Kentucky girl with ties to Gleason through her uncle, Monroe Cochran. Bob and Lucille’s daughter Bobbye was born in 1934. A son, Robert, was born in 1945.

In the early 1930’s Bob and his half-brother Henry Scott bought Ammons Pharmacy and changed the name to City Drug Store. Later in the 1930’s a new building was built on Main Street and the City Drug Store opened in its current location. Bob’s brother Dennis ran the City Drug Store in Dresden. In those Depression-era days, the soda fountain was a significant source of business for Bob and Lucille, and they worked long hours keeping it open. The store even had its own commercial-size ice cream machine and many in Gleason will remember the wonderful ice cream made there – vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, butter pecan or black walnut, and, sometimes, chocolate ripple. Long-time residents of Gleason (at least those over the age of 50) will have fond memories of after-school treats at the drugstore. Bob loved children and gave away much ice cream to them over the years. Bob Owen once remarked that if he had a dime for every ice cream cone Bob Smyth had given him, he would be a wealthy man. Over the years, a remarkable number of young Gleason men worked for Bob and Lucille at the drugstore, including Murrill Finch, Dudley Sanders, Alec Edwards, Thomas Morris, and Jack Dunning.

Bob ran the medicine part of the drugstore and Lucille was responsible for the gift department, establishing a bridal registry where, for generations, young women from Gleason have selected their bridal china. Always available to open the drugstore when he was needed, Bob filled prescriptions day and night and, sometimes, opened the drugstore at night for someone to buy a bottle of aspirin or even a forgotten birthday or Christmas gift for a wife.

Bob’s hobbies were bird hunting and training bird dogs. In those days when few pharmacists were available to fill in, Bob had to find time to hunt whenever he could slip away from the drugstore. Two of his bird dogs won awards at regional field trial competitions. In these hobbies, his faithful sidekick over the years was Rastus White.

Although he traveled some during his life, he was never happier than when at home in Gleason. Once on a cross-country trip to California to see Bobbye and her family, he stopped at a gas station on the Kansas-Colorado border where the giant Rocky Mountains loom in the distance. He inquired of the station attendant, “Mister, is there any way to get to California without crossing those mountains?” On another trip (to Williamsburg, Virginia), he called home and talked with his granddaughter Kim who asked, “Where are you, Granddaddy?” Bob answered, “Williamsburg.” Kim asked “Williamsburg, where?” Bob replied, “Lord, honey, I don’t know.”

Never one to miss a chance to cash in on the latest money-making scheme, Bob at various times grew strawberries, raised sweet potato slips behind the family home on North Cedar Street and, later, even raised pigs about a mile outside Gleason, where Bobbye and Buddy Robison now live. Insofar as is known, none of these ventures proved especially profitable!

Bob was a member of the First Baptist Church of Gleason and also served on the Board of Directors of the Bank of Gleason. His daughter Bobbye had a long career at the Bank and serves on the Board today. Bob died in 1971. Lucille continued to live in the family home until her death in 2002 when she joined Bob at Hopewell Cemetery overlooking Bob’s beloved Gleason.

Bob and Lucille left a remarkable legacy of pharmaceutical careers: son-in-law Buddy Robison became a pharmacist and worked with Bob at the City Drug Store. Bobbye and Buddy have three children, two of whom became pharmacists; one of these married a pharmacist and their son is now in Pharmacy School in Memphis. When Bob retired in 1967, he and Lucille sold the City Drug Store to Bobbye and Buddy who ran the store until Buddy retired in 1999. At that time Bobbye and Buddy sold the drugstore to their daughter Kris who carries on the family tradition.

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