Mrs. Peach Tree, Merwyn Smith, was a woman of warmth and grace

For Ben and Merwyn Smith, life was not a bowl of cherries, it was bushels and bushels of peaches grown on Filbert land that’s been in the Smith family for almost 100 years.

Ben, 82, is the peach man, the person who knows everything about growing peaches, producing “the best peaches in South Carolina, bar none,” says his daughter, Elizabeth Hutchison.

Merwyn, 80, was Mrs. Peach Tree, the boss of the roadside market the family started in 1965.

“Momma was the heart and soul of the Peach Tree,” Elizabeth said Thursday. “She even named it.”

Merwyn died peacefully in her sleep on Dec. 5 and was buried Dec. 7 at the Lakeview Memory Gardens, just a minute or two from the orchards, the Peach Tree and the place she called home for 59 years.

Merwyn, said her family, was a woman of great warmth and grace.

“Hospitality is the word that resonates,”Beverly said of her mother. “Family, friends, everyone who came to the Peach Tree, the girls that worked for her, Momma always treated everyone well.”

Medical problems – she had thyroid surgery, breast cancer and a recent illness that required her to be on oxygen – sometimes tested Merwyn’s grace, but she always maintained a sense of optimism, that God still had something for her to do, said Elizabeth and her husband, Ben.

She ran the Peach Tree – and before that the library at Clover High School – with a stern hand and great expectations. Everything had to be neat, clean and right, and quality was always expected.

One Clover student once wrote, “Mrs. Smith wears Army boots to bed.”

Beverly  was 5 years old when the Peach Tree opened and 8 when she sold her first peach. She remembers when the peaches came from the field. To get things ready, the staff – mostly girls who Merwyn hired if they passed her first interview question: did they like peaches? – would have to “fill and turn” each basket.

“It would be 125,000 degrees, there would be bugs everywhere and it was painful,” Beverly of the fill-and-turn ritual. The peaches always had to be “sunny side up” and perfectly fill the basket.

Merwyn came to savor peaches, always having a bowl of fresh peaches nearby in the summer and making peach pies and peach ice cream, Ben said. Her favorite variety was Ouachita Gold, Beverly said. “They are a yellow peach, with that pure peach flavor, sweet, juicy and just the right amount of tang,” she said.

Ben, in contrast, admits he will eat a bite or two of a fresh peach and then throw it away. It is the farmer’s mentality, he says, eating just enough of the peach to see if it’s the right time to pick and sell.

“She was the greatest person I’ve ever known,” Ben said.

It almost wasn’t meant to be.

Ben met Merwyn, a Winthrop College co-ed, on a blind date. He had invited his frat brothers of Kappa Alpha at Presbyterian College to come to York, bring their dates and play bridge at his parents’ home.

“Bridge was big then,” he said. The girl he was dating at the time couldn’t make it and Merwyn became his partner.

“I was convinced it would be a one-night stand when I introduced her to my parents as Marilyn Hazelbrook, not Merwyn Haselden,” Ben said.

There was a second date to a Rock Hill restaurant. They danced as the jukebox played Nat King Cole’s “Too Young.” The man Merwyn had been dating was there and Ben “ran him off.” They never dated anyone else and were married July 7, 1956, at the First Baptist Church in Georgetown.

They returned to York and the farm. Neither Ben nor Elizabeth can say what Merwyn’s reaction was to her new home, other than, “She married Ben, Ben lived on a farm.”

A stint for Ben in the Army took the couple to Europe. Other travels took them to Alaska, Spain, Greece and Costa Rica.

Merwyn’s heart, however, was always close to home. She was the consummate Carolina girl. She grew to love Clemson football and for several years they didn’t miss a home game. She enjoyed dancing at the Grove Park Inn in the mountains of North Carolina, but given the choice, wanted to be shagging at the pavilion at Pawleys Island.

“There was sand always in her shoes, even if she was in York County, and salt water in her veins,” Beverlysaid.

This story was originally published December 10, 2015 at 8:45 PM with the headline "Mrs. Peach Tree, Merwyn Smith, was a woman of warmth and grace."