Bipeds of Brookland: Lacey W. Smith Sr.

Posted by Abbott Klar Real Estate on Thursday, January 12th, 2017 at 8:23pm

Bipeds of Brookland:  Lacey W. Smith Sr.

 Lacey W. Smith Sr.

Lacey W. Smith Sr. was drafted into the army at 19. He remembers leaving England and spending seven days at sea “waiting for D-Day.” He landed at Normandy and spent two years supplying soldiers on the front lines. “You could see kids in the street that lost their mother and father.  They were looking for something to eat… we would just give them our rations and they would sit and eat and say thank you, but they were speaking French, and you really didn't know, but you knew they were hungry.”

 

He returned to DC in 1946 and married his high school girlfriend. They bought a house in Brookland in which they have lived for over 70 years. Lacey was born in Lynchburg, VA, but first came to DC to visit his sister when he was 8 years old. “I said, ‘I don’t think I want to go back to the farm.’ She said, ‘You’ll have to get a job.’” So he began delivering papers, living with his sister in NW, and graduated from Armstrong High School before being drafted.

“I worked for the US Weather Bureau, after the war. I worked in personnel.” In 1981 they wanted to move him from Silver Spring to Rockville, but he was unsure of the morning traffic “I had 38 years and I went to personnel and they said you can retire. So I said OK.” To get his son through Tuskegee U., Lacey worked at Bolling Air Force Base - in the officer's club - for 15 years.” His son and daughter live in Silver Spring, and “visit just about every week.”

“I stopped drinking and smoking when I was working and they had a conference on cancer.  I saw them take tar out of a guy’s body and so that’s when I told the guy next to me ‘Do you want my cigarettes?’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’”  But Lacey had cancer in 1979. “They took half of my stomach out. The doctor said my chances were about 20 out of 100. But I had good doctors.”


Lacey still enjoys living in his neighborhood, “I like the outside and I cut my own grass, up until this year. I got a little weak, at 93 years old.” 

Bipeds of Brookland:
A weekly series introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.
Article and photo by Tom Sabella.


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