Wiley died Thursday at Northeast Georgia Medical Center after a brief illness just days shy of his 74th birthday.
The well-known grocery man started in the business at a young age, working in his youth at his Uncle Henry Smith's grocery store. He also had a bread route after high school with Merita Bread Company.
After a 10-year stint at the Gainesville Post Office as a city carrier, Johnnie Wiley decided it was time to get back into the grocery business. So in 1971, he bought a local grocery store, S&W One Stop, from Harold Latimer and owned and operated it for one year.
That fresh taste of the business prompted him to operate Holiday Supermarket with his brother-in-law Junior Reece from 1973-1976. And then in 1976, the pair sold Holiday Supermarket in Oakwood and founded J&J Foods.
He also partnered with another brother-in-law, Verlin Reece, to found Quality Foods.
In addition to his career in the grocery business, Wiley built and started a Gainesville funeral home, now known as Mason and Ward Funeral Home and also developed a cemetery, Hillside Memorial Gardens.
Wiley was involved in a number of area philanthropies, as well, including the Gainesville Care Center, the Chattahoochee Baptist Association, Helping Hands Foreign Missions and the Salvation Army. Wiley was at one time a board member at Truett-McConnell College and he had a scholarship established in his honor at Belmont University.
Additional information on the life of Johnnie Wiley is available on the AccessNorthga.com obituary page.
Funeral arrangements are being handled by Mason and Ward Funeral home.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2012/1/244759