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At death, left five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
3 added to Women's Honor Roll
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Howell
ELDRIDGE
TONEY
Posted: Sunday, February 27, 2011 6:00 am | Updated: 5:16 pm, Fri Feb 25, 2011.
By IVY MOORE - ivym@theitem.com
March is National Women's History Month, the time Sumter Volunteers has traditionally honored outstanding community women by naming them to the Women's Honor Roll of Sumter County. Since the honor roll was established in 1993, 96 women, including those being honored this year, have been added. A special ceremony on Tuesday afternoon will celebrate three more who have made outstanding contributions to Sumter County.
Jo Anne Morris, executive director of Sumter Volunteers, announced that Dorothy Mae Randolph Toney, the late Lucie Anne Cuttino Eldridge and the late Frances "Pinkie" Haynsworth Hildebrand Howell are this year's honorees.
Women's History Month began as a modest weeklong observance in 1977. Women's History Week was an educational project in the schools of Sonoma County, California. Four years later, Congress made National Women's History Week official. When the recognition of women's contributions to history grew even further, Congress expanded the celebration to a month, beginning in 1987. At the first Sumter ceremony, 20 women were honored posthumously and Lady Banksiae roses planted in their honor on the pergola in Volunteer Park. Since that time, additional women and four women's organizations have been honored and rosebushes for each of them have been planted on the Exhibition Center fence as "living monuments." The Honor Roll plaque is permanently installed in the front lobby, upper level, of Patriot Hall.
Because of renovations at the Exhibition Center (now the Sumter Civic Center), the roses honoring Ms. Toney, Mrs. Howell and Mrs. Eldridge will be planted at a later date, when the landscaping and paving has been completed.
March 1 also marks 35 years' service by Sumter Volunteers to the community. The volunteer center was founded by the Junior Welfare League of Sumter in 1976. It is located at 407 W. Hampton Avenue. For information on volunteer opportunities or the Women's Honor Roll, call (803) 775-7423.
LUCIE ANNE CUTTINO ELDRIDGE
The late Lucie Anne Eldridge was a treasure to her family, her friends and her community. A child of the Great Depression, she was born Oct. 26, 1919, the second of five children of Jamie and Lucie Edwards Cuttino of Sumter. The household also included Lucie Anne's maternal grandmother, a widowed aunt and her son. Mrs. Eldridge often remarked that although her father had the burden of feeding a family of 10 throughout those lean years, there was always food and love in abundance at their dinner table and throughout the home.
The tight-knit family relationships and lack of material wealth combined with an emphasis on scholarship, patriotism and devotion to God were the greatest influence during her formative years, Mrs. Eldridge recalled.
After her graduation from Columbia College with a degree in public school music, she returned to Sumter and began teaching at Miller School. Her family tells that she surprised her family with her first paycheck by having a carpenter install cabinets in their busy kitchen. Mrs. Eldridge taught music and chorus in Sumter School District 17 for 26 years, and in her 50s earned a master's degree in music education from the University of South Carolina. As a teacher, she took joy in honing the musical abilities of her students, helping them find success in a subject they could enjoy.
In 1946, Lucie Anne married Bill Eldridge of Sumter; they had two sons, Billy and Jamie, who was born a few months after his father's death. A lifelong member of First Baptist Church, Mrs. Eldridge sang in the choir, taught the Winsome Sunday School Class and the Ruth Sunday School Class; during a hiatus from teaching in the 1960s, she served as church secretary. It is said she inspired truth with deep Christian convictions to those she taught in school and in church.
A lifelong lover of music, hymns and poetry, Mrs. Eldridge could reach back to recite poems learned in her early school days, quote Bible verses to suit any occasion and offer a prayer for personal losses and trials. One of her favorite stories that serves as an example of her self-effacing humor is an incident that happened as she was singing at a funeral. She had misunderstood the name of the deceased, then spotted the "departed" sitting in the congregation and had a hard time finishing the song.
After her retirement from District 17, Mrs. Eldridge mentioned to her friend Naomi Warner that she thought running the Naomi & Warner gift shop looked like fun. She was invited to find out for herself and thus entered a new career as an occasional shopkeeper and overseer of the popular coffee shop.
Mrs. Eldridge lived her life as an investor - not of money, but of her time, talents and interests in the people she loved, the many she felt blessed to count as friends, including the hundreds of young people she taught over the years. The return on her investments? Hardly a day passed that she didn't encounter a friend who wanted to stop and "catch up," or a former chorus student wanting to reminisce about some meaningful incident from years long past.
After a brief battle with cancer, Lucie Anne Eldridge died on Sept. 30, 2007. The many kindnesses shown to her family by friends from near and far have served as testimony to the place she held in so many people's hearts.
DOROTHY MAE RANDOLPH TONEY
Dorothy Mae Randolph Toney is the ninth of 12 children born to Willie and Bessie Fogle Randolph. Reared on the west side of Sumter, she graduated from Lincoln High School in 1953 and from Columbia Hospital School of Nursing in 1956. She did post graduate work at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Fla. The widow of Luke Toney II, she has three children, Luke III, Tamala and Dorolita.
After serving for 38 years as a registered nurse at Columbia Hospital - now Palmetto Health Baptist Hospital - and Tuomey Regional Medical Center, Ms. Toney retired. While at Tuomey, she held both instructional and administrative positions. She was an instructor for nursing assistant classes and provided orientation to licensed practical nurses and registered nurses; a head nurse of obstetrics and gynecology from 1961-1988; the first African-American head nurse at Tuomey; the first interview nurse on Day Surgery; and Hospital Relief supervisor. Her unofficial duties included assisting mothers with naming their children - and she remembered the faces and names of all her patients.
A member of the National Nurses Association, Ms. Toney was honored during National Nurses Week in 1980. The following year, she received a Tribute to Women in Industry award, and in 1983, she was listed in Personalities of the South, 12th Edition. During her entire career as a registered nurse, Ms. Toney always wore the traditional starched, white nurse's uniform and cap and polished, white shoes.
After her 1996 retirement, Ms. Toney made the transition from nurturing patients to nurturing her community. She exchanged her nurse's uniform for more stylish attire adorned with a brooch or pin on the lapel of her jacket. She served on the Sumter-Columbia Empowerment Zone, which resulted in the development of the three HOPE centers in Sumter and a certificate of commendation from Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C. She also served as president of the Northside Neighborhood Association, chairwoman of the North Sumter Alliance and member of the City of Sumter Housing and Economic Development Corporation.
Ms. Toney is a lifetime member of the NAACP, a national and local member of the Sumterites Association and a member of the Lincoln High School Alumni Association. The S.C. House of Representatives honored her with the 1995 James T. McCain Humanitarian Award for her outstanding contributions to Sumter County. She continues to serve as a volunteer with Sumter Volunteers' My Community and Me program for fourth-graders of Sumter County.
A member of Goodwill Presbyterian Church, USA, Ms. Toney is an elder, a Sunday school teacher, Bible study assistant teacher and a member of the Presbyterian Women of New Harmony. She is also a recipient of the Presbyterian Women Life Honorary Membership Award.
Almost 55 years ago, Ms. Toney repeated The Florence Nightingale Pledge: "I solemnly pledge myself before God and presence of this assembly ... to practice my profession faithfully ... I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession ... and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care."
The precepts of that pledge applied not only to her career as a nurse, but also to her family, church and community. This pledge shaped her devotion and commitment to providing quality care to her patients as well as providing a clean, safe and thriving community for families.
FRANCES "PINKIE" HAYNSWORTH HILDEBRAND HOWELL
The late Frances "Pinkie" Howell was born in Sumter in 1918, a daughter of Hugh Charles and Emilie Beattie Haynsworth. She graduated from Edmunds High School and Coker College and earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. She was married first to Russell Marshall Hildebrand Jr. and after his death, to the late Dr. Thomas Wellington Howell. She had three children, Russell III, Emilie and Virginia.
Known as a trailblazer for S.C.'s female journalists, Mrs. Howell was a multiple award-winning reporter and news editor for The Item, joining the paper as a cub reporter in 1941 after two years with The Columbia Record and retiring 22 years later as news editor. In 1955 she was named S.C. Newspaperwoman of the Year by the S.C. Press Association, and she became the first female president of the S.C. Associated Press News Council in 1961.
Mrs. Howell's skill at newspaper makeup won a coveted Ayer Award in 1956 for excellence in typography, makeup and printing and again in 1960.
Following her 1963 retirement from The Item, Mrs. Howell taught mass communications and the history and philosophy at the University of South Carolina Sumter.
At the time of her death in 1997, Item editor Hubert D. Osteen Jr., Mrs. Howell "... did everything: She edited, assigned stories, wrote stories, laid out pages, wrote headlines and caption lines, handled reporters and photographers and dealt with the public."
He added that she was "versatile, bright, creative, witty, compassionate and, when the situation warranted it, quite outspoken. ...
"I doubt if there was a single woman in the entire state during the 1940s when she took charge of The Item's newsroom. ... It was one of the best moves my father and grandfather ever made."
While working and raising a family, Mrs. Howell also found time to serve as president of the Sumter Junior Welfare League, secretary of the Sumter chapter of the S.C. Lung Association and secretary of the American Red Cross board. She was also on the board of the Sumter YWCA, taught Sunday school at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter, was a founding member of the Sumter Cotillion Club and a member of Sunset Country Club. She continued her activity in civic and church activities in Mansfield, Ohio, where she and Dr. Howell lived for several years after his retirement.
Posted in Panorama on Sunday, February 27, 2011
Proposed Change: Hugh Charles HAYNSWORTH, Sr. (I3479)
Tree: Singleton and Related Families
Link: http://singletonfamily.org//getperson.php?personID=I3479&tree=1
Description: My listing is incorrect. Frances McCall Haynsworth
Hildebrand Howell was married to her 2nd husband, Thomas Wellington Howell. I’m their only child, born Virginia Haynsworth Howell, 13 October 9
1963. How do I join and edit my information?
Thank you for your assistance.
Kind Regards,
Virginia Hinnant
Virginia Haynsworth Howell Theiling Taylor Hinnant
vhinnant@gmail.com [1, 5, 7] |
1918 - 1997 (79 years)
[2, 7]