Obituaries – March 6, 2019

Ann Rogers Nettles, 90, died Feb. 26, 2019.

Ann was the only child of the late Isabelle McCullough and Louis David Rogers. She was the granddaughter of Robert Hart Rogers and Margaret Smoot Rogers and Thomas Eugene McCollough and Margaret Smith McCollough.

She was born in Darlington May 22, 1928. Those were hard economic times, but you would not know it from her tales of growing up in Darlington. Her friends were her treasure.

She fondly recalled roller skating on Spring Street, good times in Williamson Park and Black Creek. She remembered her friend Albert showing her all the stamps from all over left on the boxes shipped to Coggeshall’s department store.

Saturday-morning movies with her friend Jean, followed up with milkshakes and comic-book reading at Hill’s Drug Store, were a favorite memory. She did not favor sissy singing cowboys.

She attended St. John’s School and graduated in 1945. She continued her education at the University of South Carolina, where she received an AB Education degree. She was elected to the Alpha Kappa Gamma leadership sorority, was editor of the Garnet and Black, and was an outstanding graduate from the School of Education for 1949.

While at USC, she met and married her husband of 61 years, Jack Nettles. She brought Jack back to Darlington to work for Sen. J.P. “Spot” Mozingo. On her return to Darlington, she taught in the public schools and earned her master’s degree in education from Clemson University in the summers.

Her summer school education at Clemson was aided by her mother’s watching her three children. When the boys were good Isabelle would treat them to a fine Southern breakfast. She taught at Brunson-Dargan School in Darlington.

The family moved to Florence in 1959 and for many years Ann taught in the Florence schools. She taught at Poynor, then for many years she taught 8th grade Earth Science and 9th grade Physical Science at Moore Junior High School. Her students included a generation of doctors, lawyers and engineers and other more reputable students.

Some of those remember her approach to discipline including being required to bring gum for everyone when caught chewing gum in class or being required to stay after school to fold 100 airplanes (or was it 200?) when caught in class throwing one.

Her boys Leonard, Louis and Sidney enjoyed the kind of free-range childhood that their mother had enjoyed in Darlington including firecrackers in their Christmas stocking.

They preferred bicycles to roller skates. The boys growing up thought it was perfectly normal for their mom to play a Concertina and use a slide rule. She raised them to know how to feed themselves, iron their own shirts and fix the wiring and plumbing.

She and Jack attended Central United Methodist Church for as long as their health would allow and treasured the friends from their Sunday school class. Sailing at Lake Robinson, fishing on Bay Lake and crabbing at the beach with Mincy Copeland, fishing at the Santee Lakes with Dot and Paul Williams, card games with the Friday Night Crowd, her garden club all take up more space in her memory that this format allows.

She is survived by her sons, Leonard (Hope) of Marietta, Ga., Louis and Sidney of Florence and three treasured granddaughters, Sydney Allison Nettles, Ammie Connor Nettles and Sarah Joy Nettles.

A memorial service followed by a visitation was held Friday, March 1, at Central Methodist Church, 167 S. Irby St., Florence.

Funeral arrangements were by Belk Funeral Home, Darlington.