Hilton Head mourns loss of Gullah matriarch, believed to be island’s oldest person

“If God would just let me have good health and let me get around and do like I’m doing now for another five years, that would be fairly right. I’d be satisfied.”

That’s what Ethel Rivers, then 100 years old and believed to be the oldest resident of Hilton Head Island, told the Island Packet’s David Lauderdale nearly five years ago, ahead of her centennial birthday.

At the time, the ever-spiritual Rivers laughed and flashed her warm smile, Lauderdale wrote. Whether she truly expected to or not when giving the interview, Rivers received almost exactly the five healthy years she’d hoped for.

The morning of Sept. 7, a month and one week shy of her 105th birthday, Rivers died peacefully on the island she called home her entire life.

A repository of Gullah Geechee culture and tradition, beloved mother to 17 children and grandmother to 46, Rivers was one of the few islanders who remembered Hilton Head as it was before private resorts, airports and a bridge to the mainland.

She was the elder even to lifelong island resident Thomas Barnwell, who often introduces himself facetiously at Hilton Head Town Council meetings as a “short-time resident of only 88 years.”

Barnwell said Rivers’ passing represents not only the diminishing memory of Hilton Head before developers transformed the island, but a fading way of life among Gullah Geechee islanders.

“She was not only her birth children’s mother, she was everybody’s mother,” Barnwell said. “It was just the way of life on Hilton Head prior to development. It was the way of life. The older residents, regardless of what section, regardless of where you lived, children growing up was the responsibility of all native people on the island. ... That’s the way Hilton Head used to be, and Mrs. Rivers is the last that I can think of, there are maybe one or two others.”

Rivers represented the “last of an era” for Hilton Head’s Gullah Geechee, Barnwell said.

“Her loss is one that’s not measured. There are no tools to measure that loss.”

‘You say let’s, I’ll say go’

Family was always Rivers’ top priority, from her first child to her last great-grandchild.

Clarence Rivers, a retired U.S. Army officer and the youngest of his siblings, said his mother would tell the story of having to turn down other island families who showed interest in adopting from the family.

“She said ‘No, these are all our children and we’ll raise them,’” Clarence Rivers said.

Even at over 100 years old, Ethel Rivers made time for family — no matter how far away they were. The Rivers clan has members spread from Jacksonville, Florida to New York, Clarence Rivers told The Packet, and Ethel Rivers had recently made a trip to Virginia to visit family. His mother lived mostly independently even at 104 years old, he said, with little day-to-day assistance from family.

Shortly after Ethel Rivers’ husband died, Clarence Rivers asked if she’d like to visit he and his wife in Germany, where he was stationed at the time. His mother didn’t hesitate, he said, and made the trip to Europe to journey across Germany, Italy, and France.

“It always felt like ‘You say let’s, and I’ll say go,’” Clarence Rivers said of his mother’s energy. “That would be the main thing for her, just a love of life, a love of going and traveling. ... She always wanted to be around her family.”

The love she had for life extended to her faith. No matter what, even into her old age, Rivers was up with the sun to check on St. James Baptist Church and its congregation, which she lived across the street from. The church, founded by freed Gullah Geechee in the 1880s, is one of the few institutions on Hilton Head that predated Rivers’ birth.

Clarence Rivers said she even had a favored spot in the church, the second pew on the right hand side.

She’d recently mentioned to church members she was hoping to reach her 105th birthday milestone.

“One of the first things she would do every morning was look out her front door to make sure the church was still there,” said Herbert Ford, chairman of the church’s board of trustees. “Her age was never a debilitating factor for her. She’s been here every Sunday morning, and whenever the church doors were open she would come.”

During one of her birthday celebrations, Ford recalled, Rivers was given a motorcycle tour to see the neighborhood she was raised in. She was only a passenger the first time around.

She had plans more in line with her “get up and go” attitude, however.

“When it ended, she said she wanted to go again, but faster this time. They were going too slow for her,” Ford said. “And she said that she wanted to drive.”

Rivers took her second circuit as the driver.

Ford said her loss is the loss of one of the congregation’s most well-loved and respected members who became “a mother to the church.”

“She was a quiet lady, but when she spoke, she spoke with impact, and everyone would respond accordingly,” Ford said. “She would always deliver words of wisdom and guidance when we were going through rough times.”

His mother’s legacy and century of wisdom boils down to a few simple lessons, Clarence Rivers said.

“You have to be good to each other, you have to trust in God, and you always treat people the way you want them to treat you,” Rivers said. “It’s all about sharing love and trying to be a help to somebody when they need help.”

Plans for memorial services are still being made.