Say hello to Miss Lucille McEver.
Sometimes all it takes to turn around a person’s day from bad to better is a simple smile — and people need to look no further than Lucille McEver, who often mans the door at Sam’s Club in West Rome.
In fact, it’s hard to ever catch a time when McEver — known as “Miss Lucille” to many of her customers — isn’t smiling.
“I love people,” she said. “I truly love people … and you know I love to talk.”
It is a Saturday morning, and McEver’s shift starts later in the day. On this day, she will work until closing time. She is relaxing in the morning sun that streams through the tall windows in her old home near Rome’s Clock Tower. There are flowers everywhere outside and photos of all of her loved ones hanging on the walls inside.
The dark wood furnishings suit her. On a small table in the kitchen there is red wine waiting to be shared with a friend. Upstairs there are three large bedrooms filled with items that bring memories of family and friends to mind. And in the hall bathroom, the original clawfoot tub beckons guests to relax in a hot bath.
Just inside the bathroom door there sits a pair of pink stiletto heels, with a puff of feathers on the tops of the toes. They are quite the eye catcher. McEver stands next to them, smiling. “Those are my Saturday night party shoes,” she said with her trademark smile, capped off with laughter.
She actually bought the shoes to put in the bathroom because she thought they would look perfect there.
Yes. There is a place for everything and everything is in its place. It’s McEver’s haven.
She has been part of the fabric of Rome and Floyd County since her inlaws purchased a farm in Silver Creek 50 years ago, and she and her husband, Willard, moved to be near them.
Her husband worked across Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee installing telephone lines when almost no one had a telephone. He ended up having a stroke and a heart attack while working that job and had to give up working. That’s when McEver took over.
She worked in various textile and yarn mills in the area to provide for her family. Eleven years ago, McEver started her work at Sam’s Club, and her husband passed away shortly thereafter.
McEver probably doesn’t have to work. But she couldn’t imagine life without it.
One of the most special things about McEver is to watch the time she takes to attend to her customers. She stops and looks at them, really looks at them, and, time-permitting, she stops and has a brief conversation with them. Many of the customers are close to her in age.
“I guess the elderly people who just need to talk to someone for a minute is my favorite part,” McEver said. “I guess a lot of them don’t have anyone to talk to.”
“I put my arms around them,” she said, with a pause. Then her trademark smile appeared. “I don’t want to take any of them home with me. I love them but I don’t want to bring them with me. … It brightens up their life when I’m helping them. They’ll say ‘I’m so happy to see you.’”
But it’s not just older folks who get attached to McEver. Younger people — especially children — do as well.
She draws smiley faces on their receipts if they give them to her. And then she adds her own special touch — slightly reworked lyrics from a song sung by Donna Fargo in the early 1970s.
McEver says, “I don’t call them smiley faces. I call them funny faces. And when I draw one I have to sing, ‘Funny face, I love you. Funny face, I need you. These are the sweetest words I’ve ever heard. Funny face, don’t leave me. Funny face, believe me. Funny face, I love only you!” The kids love it. And they love her. McEver remembers one customer telling her that she and her young daughter went to a Sam’s Club in Dallas. The woman at the door drew a smiley face, but she didn’t sing to her. The little girl broke into a fit of tears.
“She cried and she cried,” McEver said. “She said she told the little girl, ‘We’ll just have to go back to Rome to see Miss Lucille.’”
She typically works five days each week, for a total of 30 hours. And she said she will keep it up as long as she possibly can.
“That’s what keeps me going — working,” McEver said. “When I’m not at Sam’s, I’m working here. I do all my own yard work. … If I had to stay in this house and stay confined I wouldn’t last no time. Older people need to find something they like to do.”