83 www.CharlestonWomenPodcast.com | www.ReadCW.com | www.Instagram.com/CharlestonWomen It almost seems as if it were predestined. After being away for decades in Columbia, Louisville, Detroit and Philadelphia, she returned in 1979 to the Old Village to live in the house just next door to the cottage she grew up in. And it’s still her home, surrounded by the beauty of Charleston Harbor and the many mementos of her amazing life. Ann Darlington Edwards, the wife of former South Carolina Governor James B. Edwards, is a remarkable woman. Edwards was born prematurely and weighed just under 4 pounds. Her mother was visiting relatives in Edgefield, South Carolina when she unexpectedly went into labor. Edwards said she owes her very life to an African American woman named Sally Diggs. “It was a cold house and it was November. Sally Diggs was a hefty woman and she sat in front of the fire and held and rocked me.” Edwards’ story took lots of twists and turns from there. “My father was a mechanical engineer, so we moved around a great deal. My first recollection was on Blossom Street in Columbia. I was little. Mr. William Spencer Murray who was the engineer for Murray Dam had bought 8,000 acres in Eastover, outside Columbia. Most of it is Fort Jackson now. He told my daddy, ‘I want you to dig me a pond and I want a power plant and a sawmill and three or four houses. So, we were there when I started school. From there, we went back to Columbia and then we moved to Mount Pleasant when daddy worked for Santee Cooper. I was in the fourth grade. That’s when we lived in the little cottage. At the time, I think there were 1,300 people — and one policeman. We all got along fine and had an appreciation of each other. It was a lovely little town.” “Then Dec.7, 1941 came and everything changed. Daddy was called to the War Production Board in Washington, D.C. They wanted to produce as much energy as they could,” Edwards recalled. “He was assigned Utah, Colorado and Washington State and made a lot of trips out there. So, we were in Washington until the end of the war. At that time, everybody wanted to do what they could for the war effort, so when I finished high school in Washington, I wanted to be a nurse. My brother was with Patton’s 3rd Army and said there was a place for me in Washington, but I said, ‘No -- I’m going back to South Carolina’. So, I went back to Columbia to study nursing.” Edwards said she became interested in nursing when she was a teenage candy striper. “I met a beautiful girl who was ill — a patient. You walked into her room and she would say, ‘How are you? Do come in.’ Very gracious. Well, she was born with no hands. Her toes were long, almost like fingers, and she would pick up a pen and write. She was so wonderful that they asked her to go to Walter Reed Hospital so she could teach the servicemen who had lost limbs. I know she was helpful to those people. I’ll always remember that. When I graduated Charleston Women in Philanthropy The South Carolina Governer’s Mansion is one of the many places Ann Edwards has called home during her life.
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