Billy Thomas Smith's Forest Park Ace Hardware was an institution

Kinship united these helpful hardware men (and women). Three brothers owned the business. Nephews, nieces and cousins made up the work force.

“I worked there all through high school, and even before that,” said Cheryl Smith Lee of Fayetteville. “I was ‘part-time’ part-time ’cause, as the daughter, I’d come and go. Forest Park was booming with the airport and all the construction that went on. We were a catch-all for everything.”

Alas, it didn’t last.

Demographics changed. The building boom slowed. Big-box hardware stores and other retailers moved in. An institution shut its doors.

“People shed tears when that store closed,” the son-in-law said. “[Mr. Smith] knew people, connected with people and created relationships.”

Billy Thomas Smith, 81, of Forest Park and Clayton County, died Tuesday from complications of prostate cancer at Southwest Christian Hospice Care in Union City. The funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at Fayetteville United Methodist Church. Carl J. Mowell & Son Funeral Home of Fayetteville is in charge of arrangements.

Mr. Smith, a widower, was a 1945 Forest Park High graduate. He was the youngest of seven siblings whose father died when Mr. Smith was 15.

As a teen, Mr. Smith helped feed the family. As an adult, he held various jobs before he became a partner in the early 1950s with his brothers J.W. and Mike, both now deceased.

Initially, the business was called Smith Hardware & Supply Co. It then became an Ace store.

“That store was the go-to place,” said nephew Joel Smith of Stockbridge. “If they didn’t have it, they could get it for you real quick.”

Besides the Forest Park location, the family also ran Smith Ace Hardware in Riverdale, off Ga. 85. Son Michael Gary Smith of McDonough managed the Riverdale store from 1986 until it closed in 2005. He worked more than 40 years under his father’s helm; today, he’s a plumbing specialist with Lowe’s.

With his father, the son said he “learned a high level of customer service and how the retail industry competes.”

“If you serve your customers, you won’t have many other problems with other parts of the business,” Michael Smith said.

Billy Smith was a founding member of the Lake Spivey Senior Golf Club Association in Clayton County. He also helped found the Georgia Funseekers, a seniors motor coach club that travels the country.

In recent years, Mr. Smith had not been able to hit the road. The Army veteran started experiencing vision problems and went totally blind four years ago.

“Some of them are still able to travel,” his daughter said of the Funseekers. “On Sundays, wherever they were, at any campsite, they’d have a nondenominational church service.”

Other survivors include six grandchildren.