She Brought Them Joy
By Gary S. Hatrick
There are unsung heroes even in music. Joy Smith is one of those. While the world was buzzing about the Beatles, Elvis, Buddy Holly and Johnny Cash, she and her late husband Larry served with an entertainment company encouraging our troops in Korea and Vietnam.
“We were entertainers for 27 years,” Joy recalled. “We did the circuits in the United States. We did lounge acts. We met in New Jersey. He was working for one group and I went over and did an audition for the group so I started working in New Jersey and then we went out west. Our agent was from Hollywood and we started a military circuit. It was Japan, Korea, Okinawa. It was just something we fell into that we enjoyed working. The military was a great group of people,”
Joy and her husband were not a part of the USO. They were part of a private entertainment company. entertaining in Korea 12 years after the armistice. “We based out of 8th Army and they just contracted us to go to the bases to do show, she recalled. "It was '65 but there were still about 50,000 troops in there, so we were in each camps and we came home every night and stayed in Seoul. We went out every day and did shows. I sang and we did comedy. We did a lot of comedy. Larry sang and played the guitar and other instruments."
The Smiths had a catbird seat to watch history unfold. They saw the tensions raise and the number of troops increase. Soon they were entertaining troops in Vietnam and they would stay there until U.S troops were pulled out.
“Every year when we were in Vietnam, we had to get a authority through the state department,” Joy explained. “We lived there. In the beginning we were working where there were tents so we were living in tents a lot. Then we rented our own villa. We were doing sometimes two or three shows a day. It was a good living and we weren't really spending anything. We had to rent for the villa but we were splitting that with two other agents. If you were in Saigon you went to some of the restaurants that were around at the time.” Many times , she said, they ate with the military, which could be good or not-so-good.
As it became apparent that U.S. involvement was coming to an end, the Smiths saw the tensions among the American troops, but they had to return home they had to watch heartbroken as they saw the troops they had spent so much time with entertaining be rejected as they returned. “That was terrible,” she said still upset at the memory. “That was so sad. I could still cry."
She is in her 90s now and those she entertained probably would not remember her as the above-named music legends are remembered, but in more way than one, she and her husband brought them joy. She i a living legend.
