Earl and Vivian Lowrey Smith bought a summer home in Dunwoody, later making it their permanent home. The white painted Cape Cod style home sat among lovely oak trees on Chamblee Dunwoody Road just north of Vermack Road. Vivian Smith filled the home with fine antiques.
Earl Smith worked as a city salesman for Norris Candy, a large and successful candy manufacturer in the first half of the twentieth century. The Norris family also had a summer home along Chamblee Dunwoody Road. Roy Head, another employee of Norris Candy, lived nearby as well.
Before working for Norris Candy, Smith was called to duty during World War I. He went overseas from June 1918 until January 1919 as part of the Miscellaneous Quartermaster Companies Unit 2.
In The Story of Dunwoody by Ethel Spruill and Elizabeth Davis, Vivian Smith shared some of her memories of living in the 1939 home in what was considered the country at the time. Smith recalled, “My husband was so in love with the beauty of the outdoors, and country living that even though there was no central heating in the house, he persuaded me to spend the winter in Dunwoody. He spoke in such glowing terms of the crackling log fires, the romance of candlelight and the beauty of the snow and ice storms we would see when winter came, that he finally persuaded me, against my better judgement to stay.”
One night the couple was expecting guests from Atlanta for dinner. Smith laughingly told how her guests “found me at the stove bundled in my precious fur coat, broiling steaks.”
Earl Smith died in 1956 and Vivian Smith died in 1987. They are both buried at Westview Cemetery in Atlanta.
The Smith’s home was demolished to make way for development some time after 2001.