I told FK McFarland some time ago that he was having too many funerals, and I thought he should lighten up and give us a break. I have other columns written that have had to be put aside to tell more important stories of some of our wonderful people who no longer walk among us. There are ever larger “holes” in our social fabric that will never close up.

Miss Sevier cannot be Anne, and Bos was never Mrs. Vining to me. Miss Sevier was our aptly named very severe English teacher at Tryon High before she went over to Winthrop College to be the same thing over there. When a recent graduate of Winthrop joined our church in Texas, I asked her whether she’d had Miss Sevier for English, and she replied, “Oh no! She was the one you did not want unless you were a serious English major!”

Miss Sevier “bled all over” my English papers with her red pencil, but usually put an A or B at the top. She also taught biology, and I passed that with flying colors because she had me draw the bugs and plants for the tests. I remember her mostly as the red-haired lady with freckles and piercing dark eyes who spoke slowly and carefully so we would not miss a syllable.

She came to the only reunion of our THS class of 47, and I thought then that neither she nor our school secretary, Lula Burrell, had changed much in the intervening 40 years. When I retired I began visiting Miss Sevier two or three times a year, first in her home in Landrum and later at assisted living places. When she had to abandon her home, I helped her sort her library, putting her beloved and valuable books in stacks for various deserving friends. I know how she must have missed them, for she had lost her eyesight (but not her vision!).

I was always amazed by her ability to remember everything as she approached and passed age 100. She was a descendent of Columbus Mills’ brother Govan, and she gave me her lineage all the way back, which is not that far. I cannot find it in my computer, so I must have it on a scrap of paper somewhere.