Bess Macaulay Lawton

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. -- Bess Macaulay Lawton died Tuesday, January 14, 2025.

She was born September 9, 1929, to Angus Hamilton Macaulay and Margaret White Macaulay in Chester, S.C.

After graduating from Chester High School in 1946 and Converse College in 1950, she taught school in Georgetown, S.C., where she met Thomas O. Lawton, Jr., on a blind date. After marrying him, she moved to his native Allendale County, S.C., where they lived for more than 40 years, while raising three children.

She was vivacious, gregarious, energetic, and intellectually curious: as a working adult, for example, she earned a doctorate from the University of South Carolina. Besides her brief time as a classroom teacher in Georgetown and then Allendale (where, she said, her high school students weren't much younger than she was), she was also, among other things, a long-time member and chair of the Allendale Board of Education, and a member of the S.C. State Board of Education; member and chair of the Converse alumna association; an assistant dean at USC-Salkehatchie; and a waterfront director at a summer camp. Education was important to her.

She is preceded in death by her parents and brother, Angus Hamilton Macaulay; her first husband Thomas O. Lawton, Jr., to whom she was married for more than fifty years until his death in 2005; her second husband M. Davis Lever, to whom she was married for some nine years until his death in 2015; and son-in-law L. Anthony Sutin, who died in 2002.

She is survived by three children: Thomas O. Lawton III (Rachel Perry) of Hartwell, GA; Margaret Macaulay Lawton (Paul Lund) of Mount Pleasant, S.C.; and Angus Macaulay Lawton (Sara Lawton), also of Mount Pleasant, S.C.; and six grandchildren: Thomas O. Lawton IV of Anderson, S.C., Grace Macaulay Lawton of Chicago, Henry Alexander Sutin and Clara Li Bess Sutin, both of Mount Pleasant, Mary Margaret Lawton of Mount Pleasant, and Angus M. Lawton, Jr., of Chapel Hill, N.C.

She will be missed by those who knew her.

Services will be held at a date to be determined. In the meantime, in lieu of flowers, memorial contributions in her memory may be made to the Presbyterian Communities of South Carolina, https://www.prescommunities.org/support-our-mission  for employee assistance and appreciation, 2817 Ashland Road, Columbia, SC 29210.

Expressions of sympathy may be viewed or submitted online at mcalister-smith.com.

Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to McAlister-Smith Funeral and Cremation, 1520 Rifle Range Road, Mount Pleasant, SC 29464, (843) 884-3833.