Elery Little, 92, school board member was lifelong educator
March 12, 2020
Elery Legrande Little, a former school principal who served on the Georgetown County Board of Education for 18 years, died March 7. He was 92.
He was born Oct. 29, 1927, the second of four children of Coy Lonerson and Ora Mae Rogers Little. He grew up in the unincorporated Floyds community of Horry County. He was a graduate of Floyds High School and the University of South Carolina. Before graduating from college, he served in the Army at a military hospital headquarters in Korea.
Mr. Little began his lifelong career in education as a teacher and coach for the Georgetown County School District at Pleasant Hill High School in the fall of 1953. It was his first job in the field of education, and in a new community that he would never leave. Pleasant Hill became his home.
In 1968, Mr. Little received his master’s degree from Western Carolina University, and shortly after that became the principal of Pleasant Hill High School, serving in that position from the fall of 1969 until his retirement in the spring of 1993.
He served as the athletic conference chairman, on various athletic conference committees and on the Georgetown County Higher Education Commission. He also served on the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission, the Pleasant Hill Community Organization Board, and the Horry-County Technical College Education Foundation.
Both before and after his retirement as principal of Pleasant Hill High, he served as a crop insurance adjuster, as well as a rural route substitute mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service for six years.
Before being elected to the board of education in 2002, he served as the elected chairman of the Georgetown County Soil and Water Conservation District. From 1996 until only a few weeks before his death, he still worked as a bailiff at the Georgetown County courthouse.
He and the late Eloyce Williamson Little, a retired teacher and librarian at Pleasant Hill elementary and middle schools, were married for 62 years and had one daughter and two grandchildren.
Though longtime members of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, Mr. and Mrs. Little faithfully attended First Baptist Church in Georgetown each Sunday for the past 14 years.
Mr. Little is survived by his daughter, Beth Little Roberts (Andy) of Georgetown; his grandchildren, Walt Roberts of Washington, D.C., and Elizabeth Roberts Bullard (John) of Georgetown; a brother, James C. Little (Bonnie) of Nichols; several nieces and nephews, as well as special friends, Sydney Johnson and Vickie C. Tompkins.
In addition to his wife and parents, another brother, Herman W. Little, and his sister, Coleen Little Hill, died before him.
Funeral services will be held at 4 p.m. today at First Baptist Church by the Rev. Dr. Ted Sherrill. Burial will follow in Mount Olive Cemetery on Pennyroyal Road.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Mount Olive Cemetery Fund, P.O. Box 1590, Georgetown, SC 29442-1590.
