‘Proud to be a pioneer:’ Family, friends reflect on Lois Eargle, Horry’s longtime auditor
It all began with a brand new school bus.
In the early 1950s, Lois Eargle was attending high school in Sumter, S.C., living in a rural area, and would take the bus to and from school each day. In those days, Eargle’s daughters said, high school seniors were hired to drive school buses, and one day, the bus superintendent told Jack Eargle he’d be allowed to drive the district’s brand new bus if he agreed to drive it on a different route.
Excited by the possibility of driving the new vehicle, Jack Eargle agreed.
“That happened to be the route my mama lived on, so she got on the bus and he noticed her and she said she noticed how kind he was,” Eargle’s daughter, Gwyn Porter, said. “Over time, he’d save her the front seat.”
The pair later fell in love, but not before Eargle’s mother intervened.
“She told (our father) that the only way she’d let him take her daughter out was if he took her to church. That could be the date,” Porter said.
Jack Eargle agreed, and the pair would marry in 1952, the beginning of a 66-year marriage. Today, Eargle’s daughters cite their parents’ chance meeting on the school bus as the start of their family and a relationship that would help propel Eargle into public life.
“Just think this all began with a bus,” Porter said. “Thank god for that bus.”
Martha “Lois” Eargle, 85, died on Sunday while attending church services, according to her family. A former business leader, community organizer, state legislator and auditor of Horry County, Eargle’s friends and family remember her as a loving mother, skilled politician, committed Christian and public servant. Those who knew her or worked alongside her describe her as a loving, confident, intelligent woman and a “wonderful human being” who “loved helping people.”
“She was my best cheerleader, she said I could do anything I wanted to,” Eargle’s son, Stephen Eargle, said. “I always thought I had the best mom.”
He added: “I asked her, ‘How do you want to be remembered?’ And she said, ‘I want to be remembered as a statesman, not a politician.’ She wanted to be known as a statesmen who helped people with their rights and their needs.”
A funeral for Eargle will be held Thursday at the Langston Baptist Church in Conway. A two-hour visitation begins at noon and the funeral will follow at 2 p.m. Among other family, she leaves behind four children: Stephen Eargle, Gwyn Porter, Lynn Kersey and Susan Soucy. Eargle’s husband, Jack, passed away in 2018.
As news of Eargle’s passing spread, family members and public officials shared remembrances of Eargle on Facebook.
In a statement on Monday, Horry County Auditor Beth Calhoun, who took over for Eargle in July, thanked Eargle for her years of service to the county.
“She had a grand career with many accomplishments and tremendously enjoyed her life as a public official,” Calhoun said. “We thank her for her service and what she offered to others. We wish sympathy, prayers and comfort to her family as we reflect on her memory now and in the days ahead.”
Former U.S. Congressman John Napier called Eargle “an Horry institution.”
“I am saddened by the passing of my longtime friend who rendered a lifetime of distinguished service as legislator, transportation commissioner and auditor. She was devoted to her community, to her Church and to her family, and a legend in politics,” Napier said in a statement to The Sun News.
Current U.S. Congressman Tom Rice also said he and his wife were mourning the loss of Eargle.
“She was a force of good who gave generously to many causes. We are grateful for her service to Horry County, distinguished as the first woman to win the Horry County seat in the State Legislature. She will be dearly missed,” Rice wrote in a post on Facebook. “Wrenzie and I are praying for her family during this time.”
Horry County school board members honored Eargle’s legacy at a meeting Monday, remembering her reputation in the county. Eargle’s accomplishments were recognized by the board last summer.
“Miss Lois, I know she’s in heaven... I’m just so thankful that the board got the chance to honor her back in July,” school board chair Ken Richardson said while addressing the public.
Eargle was born in 1936 and grew up in the Sumter area. Growing up, her family was poor, her children said, and she left high school to work at a store to help support her parents.
“She’d work, walk back home because they didn’t have a car, and at the end of the week when she got paid she gave the check to her mom to help pay the bills,” Porter said. “Anything negative in her life she turned positive.”
After marrying Jack Irvin Eargle in 1952, the couple later relocated to Conway, where they would go on to run a typewriter and office supply store. It was Eargle’s involvement with the business, her children said, that helped spark her participation in public life. She joined a women in business group, and also volunteered with the March of Dimes charity. She also supported causes to help people with intellectual disabilities and today has two care homes named after her in Conway. A section of U.S. 378 is also named after her.
Eventually, Eargle was selected by South Carolina’s governor to lead a committee that traveled throughout the Southeast to study how other states ran their court systems and recommend changes to South Carolina’s system.
In 1976, Eargle ran for, and won, a seat in the South Carolina legislature, and was the first woman from Horry County to do so. She left office after eight years and in 1992 won election to become Horry County’s auditor, a position she’d hold from 1993 through June of this year.
Eargle’s friends and family described her as a “tireless” public servant who was always involved in the community. When she was auditor, colleagues said, Eargle was known to help anyone who entered her office, even if their issue had nothing to do with county taxes.
“Lois knew that the people put her here and so she did what the people wanted her to do,” said Horry County Treasurer Angie Jones, who’s known and worked with Eargle for two decades. “You were always to do what’s best for the citizens and if you do that you can’t go wrong.”
For other women in politics like Jones, she said, Eargle was a mentor.
“I wanted to be like her, she broke the glass ceiling,” Jones said. “She was kind of like a mentor. When I ran for office, she and I pretty much went everywhere together. She was the one who told me that I would spend a lot time helping people with things that had nothing to do with the Treasurer’s Office, and I’d spend a lot of time just sitting and talking to people.”
Jones’ friendship with Eargle blossomed into a close working relationship, she said, and the two would occasionally work out of the same county conference room together.
Eargle was also highly influential in Republican politics across South Carolina and previously served as a leader of Horry County’s local party. Drew McKissick, the chairman of the South Carolina GOP, described Eargle as a “trailblazer.”
“She helped set the stage for women in politics and was a key activist from the very beginning of the Horry County Republican Party,” McKissick said in a statement. “Lois helped the party thrive and was a dedicated member throughout the years. We’re thankful for her years of service, as an elected official and party activist, and we’ll miss her big heart. Our prayers are with her loved ones.”
For Sandy Beckwith, who worked alongside Eargle in Horry County government, she helped her get more involved in conservative politics. She described going to her first party meetings years ago, and being floored by Eargle’s presence.
“She was just the most fascinating woman I had ever met in my life. She would just take charge of the room and everyone would just stop talking and listen to every word she spoke, you could hear a pin drop,” Beckwith said. “Everyone wanted to hear what she had to say.”
Eargle’s involvement in politics would earn her friends in multiple presidents, senators and other representatives at all levels of government. She was always full of charm and kind words and knew how to build coalitions to accomplish important tasks, friends said.
When her children were young, Eargle would use them as a way to entertain and charm guests to their home or at church. Porter said she and her siblings sang in a group called “The Squares” and that Eargle would take them around Horry County to sing and perform at various church and community functions.
“We would end up singing or dancing or playing the organ or whatever but we knew that when she signed up for entertainment it would be one of us,” Porter remembered.
Beckwith described a private fundraiser in Florence she attended for former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint in the early 2000s. Former President George H. W. Bush was in attendance, Beckwith said, and Eargle was able to charm him into signing several American flags for her to take home as souvenirs. Following Bush’s speech at the fundraiser, Eargle approached him.
“He’s sitting over there eating these little sausage biscuits and they’re really not healthy and she knows he shouldn’t be eating them,” Beckwith said. “She looks at him and says, ‘Are you supposed to be eating those sausage biscuits?’ He said, ‘No but Barb’s not here.’ She said, ‘Well, I won’t tell her if you’ll sign some flags for us.”
Eargle’s political involvement would also land her on the South Carolina Highway Commission and on the “President’s Commission on Mental Retardation,” which former President Ronald Reagan appointed her to. Coastal Carolina University honored Eargle with an honorary doctorate degree in public service in 2006.
But despite her friends in high places, Eargle was also willing to take some of them on. In 1996, for example, Eargle convinced Horry County Councilman Harold Worley to run against former U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond for his seat, as Thurmond was aging. Worley ultimately agreed, and Eargle served as his campaign manager.
Worley’s bid for U.S. Senate would fail, though the pair did manage to win Horry County, a victory Worley credited to Eargle.
“She knew the art of compromise, she was just so good at it, and that’s what she taught me,” Worley said. “There’s a time that you have to stand your ground (but) if there’s room for compromise then that’s what we have to.”
Worley added: “And she did it in a way that was gentle, friendly persuasion. She could do it in a way that if it was something she was working on she could get it done and not offend you. She had a way of bringing people together that’s hard to come by.”
Though Eargle was a “trailblazer” as a woman in South Carolina politics, she never claimed the label as a feminist. She “wasn’t a feminist, she was a people-ist,” Porter said. Still, friends said, she viewed the world as having “double standards” for men and women, and helped advise other women how to navigate around those barriers. She later wrote an autobiography titled, “Double Standards.”
“There was a double standard for men and women, there was a double standard in a lot of things…but you had to maneuver around that,” Beckwith said. “She would walk into the room and if she needed to, she would demand the attention, she could just take charge of a room. She was confident but she knew that’s what she had to do. She did whatever she had to do to get the job done.”
Jones agreed.
“She was proud to be a pioneer,” she said. “(She) paved the way for future generations. Look at how many women are in the legislature now.”
Eargle’s Christian faith, though, her friends and family said, was one of her most defining characteristics. Though her husband Jack wasn’t a church-goer when they married, she wore him down over 12 years and he was eventually saved and baptized, Porter said. Her “whole life” was her faith, her children said. It was common to hear Eargle tell someone “Jesus loves you” when she was in conversation.
“If one person was lead to Christ through her life it was worth everything she had to go through,” Porter said. “Her whole life was Jesus Christ.”
On Sunday, when Eargle passed, she did so in church. Stephen Eargle, her son, said Eargle had just texed him thanking him for sharing a photo of his teenage son. The two didn’t talk long, though, he said: He had to get to a prayer breakfast and she had to get to services. Beckwith said it was a fitting place for her life to end.
“She was at church among friends and family. She went out in a blaze of glory, probably how she came into this world,” Beckwith said. “She went out Lois Eargle style.”
Correction: This story previously misstated where Eargle passed away. The story has been updated.
This story was originally published November 15, 2021 at 3:22 PM.
