Remembering my mother: A captain in the home, classroom and Grand Strand fishing scene

Late Tuesday night, my Mom, Jane Nettles Holshouser, passed away peacefully in her sleep at her longtime home in Garden City Beach.

There is no love like a mother’s love, and losing her at the age of 83 triggered a flood of emotions and memories.

As a little girl from across the Horry County line in the quiet little town of Marion, Jane always found trips with her Mom and Dad to the then-quaint fishing village of Murrells Inlet to be special.

Those short hour-long rides with her parents – Louis and Ola Nettles – down U.S. 501 in the 1940s and early 1950s started a life-long love affair Jane had with the pretty little inlet located about 10 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

By the late 1950s, as a student at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, she had met her soon-to-be husband, Carrol Holshouser of Statesville, N.C., who had come down from the North Carolina foothills to attend the university.

Carrol and Jane graduated from USC together in the Class of 1959 and were married the same year. The couple soon began raising their family in Lancaster, but the beach, specifically the Murrells Inlet area, was still calling.

By 1963, after both their children – Sarah Marie and Gregg – were born, the couple had bought a lot located on the backwaters of the inlet, a block off the beach in Garden City Beach.

The family of four soon had a beach cottage to enjoy during summers and weekends in what was then a sparsely-populated area. The days spent on the beach along with fishing and crabbing in the inlet commenced.

A special memory sticks out. My Mom and grandmother, Mama Ola, taught my sister, Sarah Marie “Sam” Cox, and I the intricacies of crabbing in the brackish backwaters of the inlet, and at the end of the day, Mama Ola’s delectable crab casserole was served piping hot out of the oven.

By the early 1970s, Jane and Carrol, who passed away in 2016, had obtained the first in a long line of boats, and began fishing the waters of Murrells Inlet and the Atlantic Ocean.

But in those days, the full-time Holshouser home was in Lancaster, and Jane was busy there as a mother and teacher.

She was in the middle of a career that spanned three decades teaching at the University of South Carolina-Lancaster, from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. She culminated her education by earning a Masters Degree from Winthrop College in 1972 and finished her career at USC-Lancaster as Professor in the School of Secretarial Science and Data Processing.

Between the home in Lancaster and the Garden City Beach property, Jane and Carrol were exceptionally busy, and burned up the road between Lancaster and the beach.

In 1979, the couple founded a successful business, Custom Outdoor Furniture & Restrapping, and they were soon full-time residents of Garden City Beach.

Jane retired from USC-Lancaster, and worked side-by-side with Carrol to grow and expand the business, eventually passing ownership to their children and granddaughter, including Sam’s daughter, Olivia Cox.

The business has stood the test of time in the Myrtle Beach area and continues to flourish 42 years later.

From the late 1970s through the early 2000s, they operated charter fishing boats, the final one fittingly named Jane-Carrol, out of the old Gulf Stream, Inlet Port and Voyagers View marinas in Murrells Inlet.

Jane was one of the few, if not the only, women to obtain her captain’s license in the area.

She left this life a well-respected, much-loved mother, grandmother, professor, captain and friend to many.

Her love for her children was unconditional, and she was always there to offer support, right down to passing down a successful business to maintain.

A comment attributed to coach Lou Holtz, former head coach of her beloved Gamecocks, is especially fitting for Mama Jane, who accomplished so much in her life.

Holtz said “For victory in life, we’ve got to keep focused on the goal, and the goal is heaven.”

And, after a life well lived, that is the final of many goals Jane Holshouser accomplished.

Until we meet again, I love you, Mom.