Rev. Allen Henry Lawson

Rev. Allen Lawson

PELION - Services for Rev. Allen Lawson, 79, will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, August 18, 2007, at King Grove Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. Cook Addy. Interment will follow in the church cemetery. The family will receive friends from 6 until 8 p.m. this evening in Thompson Funeral Home of West Columbia. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the American Stroke Foundation, Stroke Activity Center, 5960 Dearborn, Mission, KS 66202.

Rev. Lawson died Wednesday, August 15, 2007. Born in Gaston, SC, he was a son of the late James W. and Ruby Baltzggar Lawson. He was a U.S. Marine veteran of WW II. A member of King Grove Baptist Church, he had retired from Pacific Mills and was a former Baptist pastor.

Surviving are his wife, Shirley Lawson of Pelion; daughters and son-in-law, Joyce Cook of Pelion, Joan Lawson of Rock Hill and Sherry and Jimmy Pearce of Lake City, FL; sons and daughter-in-law, Wayne and Janice Lawson of South Congaree, Phil Lawson of West Columbia, Larry Laminack of Pelion and Terry Laminack of West Columbia; sisters and brother-in-law, Willo Dean and Otis Freeman of Columbia, Alma Leach of Cayce and Retha Bates of West Columbia; brother, Dewey Lawson of Augusta; seventeen grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren.

My father died the year I finished high school and he had been very strict about making us young 'uns call our mother "Mother" and my brother and sister still call her that but I began to call her "ma" that summer. It was definitely a term of endearment but also something that acknowledged the new and closer relationship that began between my sister, ma, and me.

Anyway, I went to work that summer in the cotton mill my grandfather retired from and that my mother worked in ever since we moved to South Carolina in 1973. I used to slip off from my job during breaks and go to the 'timekeepers' office where ma worked with about 5 or 6 other ladies and I noticed one of the supervisors who had to bring timecards up there would always hang around and chat for a while.

He was every bit a proper "old school" gentleman but he was very personable and an engaging man who always had a funny story to tell or something good to share with you and well you just was always glad to see him. He had been good friends with my grandfather for years and before I left the mill, he had begun bringing sweet rolls or a sausage biscuit or something to my mother kinda regular so it didn't surprise me much when they began dating a year or so later.

I guess you could say the courtship went well :-) cause after a couple more years they got married. Now this man I had known as Allen was ma's husband so naturally he became "pa" to me. There are so many good things I could say about this good man but in the interest of keeping this eulogy brief, I will just say that I will be forever grateful to the Lord for showing me through pa how a man should conduct his life here on this earth.