In her 18 years in the Smyrna city clerk's office, Willouise Spivey worked with seven mayors and dozens and dozens of council members.
And during the 11 years Mrs. Spivey was the city clerk, she was the key to the city, said Mayor Max Bacon.
“She was clerk before we had a city manager, so to get anything done you had to go through Willouise because she ran the city,” the mayor said. “And if I had a question, I knew the person to answer it was Willouise.”
One of the reasons Mrs. Spivey had so many answers was because she’d been an employee of the city since 1958, when she was an accountant for the city. Ten years later, she found herself with the title of assistant city clerk and in December 1975, she was appointed city clerk.
“It is the most interesting job,” she said in a 1986 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about her impending retirement. “You are right in the middle of everything. You hear the gripes and complaints, and you work with the mayor and the council, you hear both sides of the story.”
In December 1986, Mrs. Spivey retired and with her went a lot of institutional knowledge, Mayor Bacon said.
“She was smart,” he said. “She knew this city inside and out. I missed her when she retired, but she was still around, you know? Now that she’s gone, I’m really going to miss her.”
Edith Willouise Claxton Spivey, of Smyrna, died Friday of natural causes, her family said. She was 89. Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m., Tuesday at King Springs Baptist Church in Smyrna. Burial will follow at Georgia Memorial Cemetery. Castellaw Funeral Home, Smyrna, is in charge of arrangements.
Mrs. Spivey was well liked in city government and in her community of Settlers Walk, said her daughter, Suzanne Spivey, of Cumming.
“She’d been really active in her neighborhood,” Ms. Spivey said. “And she didn’t miss playing canasta at the club house every Friday.”
Playing canasta was how Mrs. Spivey met Joan Parsons five years ago. The two formed a bond that lead others to believe they were sisters, Ms. Parsons said.
“A lot of people thought we were sisters, and I guess we did too, sometimes,” she said with a laugh. “We thought alike and we’d gotten to the point where we could almost finish each other's sentences.”
Ms. Parsons said she’d often go to the clubhouse in Mrs. Spivey’s neighborhood and play canasta, even though she didn’t live there.
“She was just the friendliest most outgoing lady I’d ever met,” Ms. Parsons said. “And she made a lot of friends.”
Mrs. Spivey is also survived by a son, Robert A. Spivey of Cartersville; a sister, Annette Ivey of Kite and three grandchildren.
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