CityView Magazine

10 | November/December 2017 M C F A D Y E N ' S M U S I N G S A All of us witness the passing of the giants. We receive news that some icon has died. e impact on our lives causes us to collectively pause and think what life was like with them and how the world will change without them. Likewise, there are those who live and die in the shadows. e public at large never knows them. ey dwelt inside that great mass of humanity that comes into the world of unknown parents and leaves the world in a most quiet way. Felton Jefferson Smith was among the vast fraternity of those who most folks never know. For the fiy years when my life intersected with his, he lived just this side of the South River in Stedman. He recounted to me that he went to Armstrong School, as did all of his race on the east side in the 1930s. (I was always cognizant of that when I delivered my three children to that same school 65 or so years later.) I do not know if he graduated high school; I am certain that he did not attend college. I do know that if his children desired to attend college, he and his wife, Miss Nadeen, found a way to send them there. I remember his daughter Jane and son Buddy the best. ere were others I met through the years whose names Time has taken from me. Felton Smith was proud of their education and of their subsequent self-sufficiency. ey were his legacy – what he felt he le for this world from his humble place in the shadows. I also know that he did not have many choices for his life. I heard from his own mouth that a poor man of color in the '40s and '50s went to work or went "to the bad." So Felton Smith, a very good man, went to work. I am not sure of all the line items on FJ's lifetime resume. e job that boosted him up the socioeconomic ladder a few rungs, though, was working third shi at Merita Bakery on Ramsey Street for at least a couple of decades. And I know that aer he got off work at seven for most of those years, he probably caught a nap and a mouthful to eat before making his way to McFadyen Music at 513 Gillespie Street, where we just called him "Smith." He was hired by my dad somewhere around the time I was born. I think he le for a short time, but very likely those college tuitions brought him back to that secondary job at the music store. In all the subsequent 35 or 40 years he spent at McFadyen Music, he never shirked a duty and he never caused drama. Felton was a man for any task. He swept and took out trash. He delivered pianos. He unloaded trucks and manned the shipping table. He drove shuttles between stores in Fayetteville. Later, aer we grew into ten cities, Felton headed up the interstate shuttle. From those travels, many new people came to know Smith and his integrity. Store managers and inventory clerks from Myrtle Beach to Asheville were always happy to see FJ back into their We Called Him "Smith" BY BILL MCFADYEN Felton Smith defined the corporate culture at McFadyen Music. He represented the very best of what my dad wanted our company to be.

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