Harold Auld

Harold "Smiley" Franklin Auld was born September 16, 1920, in Denison, Crawford County, Iowa, to Frank Elmer Auld (1883-1946) and Bertha Ann Nixon (1887-1987). His paternal grandparents, Thomas Locke Auld (1854-1943) and Mary Jane Orchard (1852-1886), and his maternal grandmother, Laura Belle Varner (1857-1947), came to Iowa in the 1850s. His maternal grandfather, Franklin Peck Nixon (1856-1903), was born in Clinton County, Iowa, where his parents (Lewis Burr Nixon and Mary Ann Albright) were married after their families came to Iowa in the 1840s. Smiley passed away Thursday, January 20, 2011, at Myrtue Medical Center in Harlan, Iowa, at the age of ninety.
Smiley grew up in Denison, where he received his education, graduating from Denison High School in 1938. He lived in Fort Dodge, Iowa, for several years until he enlisted in the Navy a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. He served in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and later as a baker when they were slacking out the USS Kearsarge prior to commissioning it. He loved to dance and won a jitterbug marathon when on leave in Chicago during the war. After WWII he briefly attended Iowa State University until the death of his father in 1946, at which time he returned to Denison to run the greenhouse his parents started in 1924.
In 1953, Les Wiley pulled Joyce Clement of Dunlap, Iowa, over to dance with Smiley, telling her that he was a nice guy who wanted to dance... and the rest is history. On July 11, 1954, over 300 friends and family members suffered through the 110 degree heat in the middle of the day to witness the wedding of Joyce and Smiley at the Methodist Church in Dunlap. Following the wedding, Smiley and his new bride moved in with his mother "for a few weeks while they looked for an apartment," remaining in the house to this day.
He was an avid hunter and fisherman, although Joyce made him move his rod and reel and tackle box from its "storage place" next to the front door where it was handy to grab on the way out. They spent their honeymoon fishing, and Joyce went with him on his hunting and fishing trips for years. The Auld family spent weeks during the summers fishing in the northern U.S. and Canada. Smiley was listed in the 1964 edition of the Boone and Crockett Clubs Records of North American Big Games for placing a trophy mule deer in New Castle, Colorado, that ranked 109th in the nation.
He had a great interest in genealogy and spent a lot of time researching the family history, traveling around the Midwest photographing family graves and reviewing historical records, and visiting with relatives. Although he sought information on all family lines, his major project was locating the descendants of his grandfatherss siblings, the children of John Locke Auld. He was very pleased to be able to go to Carroll two years ago to meet the great and great-great-granddaughters of one of his grandfathers older sisters whom he had lost track of in the 1940s.
In 1960, Smiley and Joyce added a flower shop, expanding the business into Ye Auld Flower Shoppe and Greenhouse. They sold the flower shop in 1982 and retired, closing the greenhouse in 1984. For the next 22 years, they spent winters in Texas, enjoying the warmer weather with the other northern "snow birds." In 2006, Smiley began dialysis, curtailing his travel to warmer climes. He was a member of the American Legion and VFW.
Smiley was preceded in death by his parents. Survivors include his wife, Joyce; his two children, Lesa and Scott; his mother-in-law, Wilma; his brother-in-law, Rex; and many cousins.