In May 1946, Norman Rockwell came to Carrollton to visit Oak Mountain School and photograph teacher Mary Effie McGuire and her pupils. The resulting painting, Norman Rockwell Visits a Country School, appeared in the November 2, 1946, issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Pupil Jerry Smith was the boy behind the stove. Mary Effie McGuire was an A and M school graduate.

When Jerry Smith's mother died, he found a photograph in his mother's trunk of Mary Effie McGuire, himself, and his fellow pupils Bobby Hunter and Steve Langley that was also taken at Oak Mountain School in the 1940s.

The image was taken by Edna McGuire Weston, a native of Carroll County, who moved to Atlanta in 1934 and, in 1945, became the first female news photographer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, retiring in 1980. She was probably related to Mary Effie McGuire.

Jerry Smith donated the image that he found in his mother's trunk to Ingram Library's Special Collections on July 30, 2019.