Women have been critical in shaping the Smyrna Vinings community from its earliest days and even before its formal incorporation in 1872.
However, retellings of the Jonquil City’s history sometimes overlook their contributions to making Smyrna the beloved community it is today.
Here is a brief look at three women whose names might not be on the city buildings but who were key to influencing the community.
Cheryl Livsey Bursh
When Cheryl Livsey Bursh saw a problem in her neighborhood, she didn’t wait for someone to help. She took action.
Bursh, who grew up in Smyrna’s Rose Garden Hills neighborhood, couldn’t walk through her neighborhood because of the many drug dealers there. So, she organized a community drug forum in July 1988, according to newspaper accounts from the time.
That same year, she founded Hands, Feet & Mouth. The group’s mission was to provide academic and self-esteem support for teens, as well as a neighborhood watch in the predominantly black Rose Garden Hills-Davenport Town neighborhoods.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush highlighted the group as a “Daily Point of Light,” which the president created to recognize Americans from all walks of life taking meaningful voluntary action in their communities to solve serious social issues.
Lorena Pace Pruitt
Lorena Pace Pruitt made history when voters elected her in December 1945 to succeed J.Y. Wooten, who resigned as Smyrna’s mayor. She served as mayor from 1945 to 1948. She was the city’s first female elected official when she was elected to the city council in 1944 and, to date, its only female mayor.
Born on June 30, 1896, Pruitt’s tenure as mayor is marked by her efforts to upgrade the city’s water infrastructure and pave its dirt streets. These efforts helped to bring the city into modern times.
Pruitt also fought unsuccessfully against the cessation of the Atlanta Northern Railway, an interurban line connecting Atlanta and Marietta. According to at least one report, she witnessed the interurban’s first run in 1905.
Before her public service tenure, Pruitt was the director of the State Training School for Girls and the Confederate Soldiers’ Home.
Leila Ross Wilburn
Leila Ross Wilburn holds the distinction of Georgia’s first registered female architect. While the impact of her more than 50-year career is apparent throughout the Atlanta area, nowhere is her legacy more apparent than in Smyrna.
Among the apartments, commercial buildings, hospitals, and houses she designed is the Reed House in Smyrna, which was built circa 1910. The edifice’s design reflects Wilburn’s unique Craftsman style.
Wilburn was born in Macon, Georgia in 1885. Her family moved to Atlanta the following decade, and she studied at what is today Agnes Scott College.
She started working at Atlanta architectural firm B.R. Padgett & Sons in 1906. About two years later, she opened a firm in Atlanta’s Peters Building, where she remained until she died in 1967.
She published nine plan books, starting with Southern Homes and Bungalows in 1914. Wilburn was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement in 2003.