Cecil Burger spent most of his adult life around big trucks and heavy machinery - items used to improve our way of life and move our society forward. He was always about progress. And in the over 45 years of Burger’s service to Smithville, we saw progress, from improved streets to sewer line expansion to city services without high taxes. He served this city from 1966 through 2012.
Born June 10, 1923 to Jim and Willie Burger, he grew up in the Center Hill Community of Cannon County not far from the DeKalb County line. Growing up in the Great Depression era, Burger took on great responsibility at an early age, helping with the family needs. It was a work ethic that served him well.
From his first job driving a gasoline truck from Nashville to Woodbury, Burger stayed busy, even in retirement years.
He served as city secretary/treasurer from 1966 to March 31, 1989, including two years as city judge. He retired from that position but came out of retirement 15 fifteen months later after being elected mayor in 1990. He served as mayor for 16 years and an alderman for six years.  Out of 22 elections he never lost one. During his time with the city, as an employee and alderman, Burger served under or with 10 mayors and 52 aldermen.
Few people knew that Burger had a hand in building Camp Forest, the Smyrna Air Force Base, an addition to the Veterans Hospital in Murfreesboro, and the construction of Interstates 40, 24 and 75. He also helped build a portion of Highway 70 from Watertown to new Dowelltown, and also played a role in the construction of Center Hill Dam and the Cheatham and Old Hickory dams.
Around 1947 Burger took a job driving a dump truck and operating a crane at the Center Hill Dam construction site. In July of 1948 he married Wilma Jo Purser of Cannon County and the couple moved to DeKalb County in November.
Later he landed a job with a highway construction company and the job often took him and his family on the road. When the job would last for a school term, the family moved to a town near the work. When the job was less than a school term, the family would stay in Smithville. His oldest children’s strong desire to finish school in DeKalb County is what led him back to Smithville for good.
While living in Lafollette and working on Interstate 75, Burger’s oldest children returned to Smithville to live with their grandmother so they could finish school.
On a return trip to Smithville one weekend, Mayor Othel Smith asked Burger, while at church, how he would like to be city judge, to which he replied, “Not worth a dime.” But after he and a few other town leaders began talking, moving back to Smithville began to take shape.
About a month later, after working 10 hours on the interstate road, Burger drove to Smithville to attend a city board meeting and hear what the city had to offer. Though the city could not offer what he was making at the time on the construction of the interstate, Burger told them he would take the job at treasurer and judge only because his children wanted to finish school here and he wanted to be with them. After two years of being the city judge, Burger told the leaders he was quitting that and that they needed to get somebody else.
As is the case now, the secretary/treasurer’s job also meant overseeing the city’s public works operation and employees. It became a job Burger had to tackle quickly.
“I believe the first winter I was here everything but a six-inch water line froze,” Burger told the Review in a 2005 interview. “We thawed lines all the time. We had half-inch, one-inch and one-and-one-half inch lines put in with a shovel or turning plow and were not very deep in the ground. The second year I started lowering and enlarging lines and that corrected a lot of that.”
And what was his pay as the city’s public works chief? “I’m pretty sure the deal was $90 a week and every month I got a raise until I got to a certain point,” he said. “What that point was I don’t recall.”
During his tenure as an employee, Burger was instrumental in several additions to the sewer system and street improvement.
“We had four or five regular employees and when I’d want to patch a street, I’d go over to the pool room and get four or five men for a day or two  and we’d patch street,” Burger said in the interview. “When Miller and Wilson Heights subdivisions were developed, I got with the county and they had the equipment and I furnished the material. In fact, Jerry Lee Cantrell and I did most of the street work in those two subdivisions and it was a good job. It lasted for several years before they were ever paved.”
After serving 23 years in that position, Burger retired on March 31, 1989. He took a position overseeing construction projects for Middle Tennessee Natural Gas Utility District, including the expansion of gas lines from West Broad Street in Smithville to Dry Creek and along the John Bragg Highway in Cannon County.
But friends soon came calling and Burger got in the mayor’s race and took office on July 1, 1990.
Why did he run for mayor? “I thought I had a few good friends, but I found out they got me in trouble,” he said with a chuckle.
“I believe construction work gets in your system. Anytime I get around a piece of equipment I want to get on it and when I was city secretary/treasurer I ran the backhoe, the grader and was out there with the men. That’s probably the reason I came back as mayor. I had been here so long before.”
During Burger’s tenure with the city, it received a $500,000 grant for sewer rehabilitation work, instituted a street paving program and so much more.
The most rewarding part of his uninterrupted tenure as mayor? “Dealing with the public, I guess. You like to see things accomplished and you want to keep taxes down. I think we have done a fairly good job. There are some things we need and I guess we could raise taxes and get them I suppose. But I think we’re doing fair. We try to do what we do right. And there’s one thing I never did like and that’s indebtedness,” he said during the 2005 interview.
“I very seldom disagree with the board. We try to have things discussed before we go to the board meeting, Another thing is we’ve not had to borrow money. Nobody’s been out of order too much, I don’t think. If you don’t work together you’re not going to accomplish a whole lot,” he continued.
Another contributing factor of Burger’s success may have been that as mayor he seldom used his veto power over a board meeting.
“I’ve done it once and I was threatened because I didn't do it one more time,” he said. “I don’t like to do things like that. You don’t get along with the board doing things like that. I never did like trouble. I like things to run smoothly.”
Mr. Burger was preceded in death by his parents and his wife, Wilma Jo Burger, and leaves behind four children, five grandchildren, a sister and a sister-in-law.