By Luana M. Graves Sellars
Photo Credit: Lloyd Wainscott
Everyone has a story. some people live action
It’s not often that you have the opportunity to spend time with a centenarian; it’s a chance to pause and to take notes. Time with her is a chance to peek behind the historic curtain and receive first-hand knowledge and unexpected details from someone’s past. Still active and clear in her memories, Mother Ethel Rivers comes across as if she’s decades younger. It’s only when she starts to share her rich past that you realize how much of a rare island treasure that she is. She, however, doesn’t think so. When she’s told that her lifelong experiences have made her into an amazing woman, she simply replies “that’s what they say.” With Mother Rivers, it is that simple. During her lifetime, she’s cut down trees with a saw, made quilts and even worked on cars. “No work was too hard for me. I did what I needed to do.”
When she thinks back, she remembers a life well lived in Mitchelville, the same area of Hilton Head that she grew up in. “And that’s a very long time,” she says. “I don’t know how I look, but I feel good. Twenty years ago, I didn’t think that I’d still be here. I must have done some good somewhere down the line. I just put all of my trust in the Lord.”
With a crisp mind full of memories that take her back to her teenage years, Mother Rivers recalls most of what happened on the island during her lifetime, including the category 2 Georgia-South Carolina Hurricane in August of 1940. As the storm made landfall in Beaufort, she says that her family was over near Barkers Field in a house that the storm blew all of the windows out. Frightened for their safety, the family made their way over to the now historic St. James Church Baptist, which also began to shake violently. Uncertain about their safety in the church, they made it over to Flora Washington’s house, where Joe Bailey, was gravely ill at the time. She says, that she never saw someone that old or sick before. Scared by his appearance, and willing to brave the storm one more time, she said, “do we have to stay here?”
Life on the island certainly has changed in a century. Rivers has lived in her house since 1942. Within walking distance down the street, there used to be a small store where she would go to buy a large biscuit and meat for 5
Back then, children started school when they were about 10 years old. Her formal education was in a classroom set up in the parsonage behind St. James Church by the time she reached the 5th grade, because an advanced education was only available to children who knew someone that they could stay with while in school in Tybee or Beaufort. That didn’t end her thirst for knowledge. “I read everything that I could to multiply my knowledge and learn more. Then I stayed here and got a good husband.” Her marriage to Nathan “Apple” Rivers lasted for 74 years; and when he died in 1975, she pledged not to remarry, because “he was to be her only love.”
On the day we spoke, Mother Rivers had just cast her vote during early voting and reminisced about the first vote that she cast in 1934, when she was 16. She was newly married then and recalls that she was one of the first black women from Hilton Head to travel to Beaufort to vote. At the time, they didn’t even have the courthouse ready; they had a special room for the women to vote.
Photo Credit: Mike Ritterbeck
Growing up, church services at St. James were only every other month. Over her lifetime, she “worked in every auxiliary at the church and sometimes, I even played the piano.”
Mother Rivers shared six principles on how she has lived her life over the past 100 years. It’s important to “make sure that you give your body a rest. God can’t work on your body, if you don’t allow yourself to rest. Remember to give one day to the Lord. Always think about other people and share what you have. Remember to treat people like you want to be treated. And always do the right thing, the best way that you know how.”
On October 16th, 2018, Mother Rivers celebrated her 100th birthday, surrounded by the majority of her family, which includes: 17 children, 43 grandchildren,
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