"Something
for the church and something for the community," is the way that Nancy
and Mac Boyle describe their lifelong habit of reaching out through their
talents and resources to the world around them. "My models for service
were my father Thomas Ruff and my aunt Arney Childs, both of whom always
'gave back' to the church and the community," says Nancy. Community service
was an important part of her child-raising years, as an active member of
the Junior League of Columbia and Board member of FAW. Now, as the Chairman
of the Board, Nancy guides the business of FAW with relational skill that
makes each Board meeting an experience of Christ in community.
When Nan went back to teaching at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School after her children were grown, she took that model of "something for church/something for community" with her. One of the legacies of those ten years was the building of community service into the school's curriculum. It started with an annual Christmas outreach program where each grade took a Christmas party to a community center for the elderly or less fortunate. The campus was empty on the last day before Christmas vacation as the school buses loaded with kids and their gifts and party treats headed out to share with others.
Today, that seed has become a big part of the school's philosophy as each grade provides some service learning, not only at Christmas, but all year. Daughter Robin, a teacher at Heathwood for the last sixteen years, helps keep the legacy alive. She led her sixth grade students in raising nearly six hundred dollars and providing Christmas presents for a bus driver and her three children after the driver was badly burned. It was an easy task because the kids were already focused on reaching out to others because of their five years at Heathwood.
Upper school students are required to give a certain number of hours for individual community service for graduation. That seed also grew as Nancy's granddaughter Margaret became involved in working with The Nurturing Center, a counseling service for abusive families and served on its fund-raising board while still in high school. Margaret, who recently graduated from Davidson College is now looking for a job with an impressive resume that includes twelve different volunteer jobs through high school and college although she also worked part-time.
Both Nancy and Mac have served their church, Trinity Cathedral, in a variety of ways, from the vestry to Christian Education. Although Nancy retired from her job as co-director of Christian Education in January, her years of experience and involvement will continue to benefit Trinity and the diocese as a consultant. Those seeds have already grown as all three daughters and two sons in law have served as vestry members and Sunday School teachers.
Daughter Arney serves on the Board of Trinity Housing, a project to provide homes for families in transition and to provide skills to make that transition successful. Daughter Laurie, chairman of the math department at Columbia College, has also found time to serve her church as chairman of the Christian Education Committee, Sunday school teacher and on the board of the Trinity Child Care program.
Connecting Land and People
For Mac, community service became a full-time volunteer job after he retired. Growing up spending his summers at Pawley's Island at his grandmother Daisy McGregor's house, he saw her reaching out to the black community as well as her commitment to All Saints, the then small Episcopal church. Daisy McGregor was an important force in the founding of Faith Memorial School for the black children whose founding teacher Ruby Forsythe was named one of Newsweek magazine's American heroes several years back. That legacy of outreach became a motivating force for Mac to "give something back" when he retired and saw a need for community leadership as the beachfront community incorporated.
"I wanted to give something back to Pawley's because it had given me so much," he explains. After a stint on the Board of Directors of the Civic Association, he decided to offer himself as a candidate for town council. Although he lost the first election by five votes (out of only 141 cast), he ran again and led the ticket. This volunteer job takes many hours of Mac's time each month and he spends almost as much time at the beach as he does in Columbia. It's been hard work, and at times very frustrating, but it is also very rewarding as he sees some of the goals become reality.
One of those goals has been the repair of the Pawley's creek which after years of filling in from siltation, received an almost deadly dose of sand from Hurricane Hugo. Mac's son-in-law Yancey McLeod has been one of the leaders in getting government cooperation to replenish the eroding beach from the creek's sand.
Yancey, a lawyer by training, devotes an enormous amount of his time to conservation and education. He has also drawn on his roots to plant seeds for the future. "My father was very community minded," he says. "He was always helping those who couldn't pay for his services as one of the state's top lawyers." For Yancey that service has included leadership in the American Cancer Society, Ducks Unlimited and countless conservation organizations. Although his father was active in politics, serving in the state senate and as state chairman of the Democratic party, Yancey's only political involvement has been as District Conservation Commissioner, a volunteer position he held for ten years.
Yancey's main interest is in conservation education and his mission is finding ways to teach children to love the land. "The process of urbanization has taken away our children's contact with wild things and nature, and we must provide them with experiences to educate them in the needs of the world or they will grown up into adults with no understanding of the outdoors," he explains. From his home on Cook's Mountain which overlooks the Wateree River, Yancey is planting those seeds. He has offered a graduate course for teachers for the last fourteen years in which experts from all areas of conservation and natural history share their particular expertise. Each year, many of those teachers and other groups of adults come to Cook's Mountain to experience the outdoors. "I've always known that God lives in the Wateree Swamp," says Yancey and each year he leads new groups to that same conclusion.
The legacy of giving back can be seen in the younger grandchildren as well. Alice and Elizabeth belong to a dance organization that takes performances to nursing homes. The whole Boyle clan patrols the beach at Pawley's each summer looking out for endangered loggerhead turtle nesting sites and watching as the nestlings make their dangerous path to the sea. A new effort will begin with the "Adopt a Beach" program where the Boyles will clean and inventory the trash on one section of Pawley's twice each year. Nancy and Mac are already seeing the legacy they have built as "something for the church and something for the community." Those deep roots have produced some very diverse seeds.
Robin McLeod of Columbia, SC, was asked to write this article on
leaving a legacy of service to honor the Boyles for their 50th wedding
anniversary and to celebrate Nancy's leadership of the FAW Board of Directors.