Carol Benson Glover

Carol Benson Glover, 86, of Hanahan, a retired sales clerk of Carnation Company, widow of Herbert Burlock Glover, Jr., passed away Tuesday, September 15, 2015.

Carol was born June 19, 1929, in Kirkwood Mo., a daughter of Benjamin John Benson and Mathilda Pfitzinger Benson.

Surviving are a son- William C. Glover and his wife, Diane, of New Canaan, Ct; a sister- Gloria Micyska and her husband, Ken, of Ill.; son-in-law-Father Titus Fulcher of Hanahan; 4 grandchildren- Katherine Fulcher; William Glover Jr."Chip"; Kylie A. Glover; Thomas Chase Glover. She was predeceased by her daughter- Karen Fulcher; brother-Robert Benson; sister-in-law- Barbara Benson.

Her graveside service will be held in St. Lawrence Cemetery, Huguenin Avenue, Charleston, SC 29401, Friday afternoon, September 18, 2015, at 1 o'clock.

Memorials may be made to American Cancer Society, 5900 Core Road, Suite 504, North Charleston, S.C., 29406.

Mom was born in Kirkwood, MO in in 1929 and started her life with The Great Depression and immediately thereafter World War II. Maybe that’s where she learned her trademark selflessness.
In 1952, she married my Dad at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City; that’s where Karen and I went to our first Sunday school. Mom and Pop were married for almost 55 years before Pop passed away in 2007.
But this is about my Mom, so I’ll try to keep it focused there, otherwise this could go on for hours.
Here’s a stab at how I would describe my Mom:
Never the center of attention and never wanting to be - yet always the catalyst, the heartbeat, the direction setter. She was very creative, artistic, and musical – people who only met her in later years may not know she had a wonderful singing voice. She was caring, pragmatic and practical. And she was the most selfless person I have ever known.
She was affectionately known privately to several relatives as “Saint Carol”.
Upon reflection, how about a comparison to Fraulein Maria from The Sound of Music? If Mom were here right now, this thought might embarrass her. But it’s really not a stretch at all:
Remember the scene from Sound of Music where Maria made children’s clothing from drapes? When I saw the movie in 1965, that scene seemed perfectly normal to me. That was my Mom through and through. She did stuff like that all the time. Thunderstorms? Like Maria, Mom taught us to embrace them – look forward to them – thunderstorms were nature at its best – providing spectacular beauty; not to be feared, but to be enjoyed. Religion and devotion to church and God? Once again, this describes Mom to a TEE. More on that in a minute. Climbing over the Alps to seek freedom for the family? Ok, that would be a stretch, but the parallel is that Mom would do anything it took for her family – regardless. She helped us climb many “mountains”.
Coincidentally, I recall that Mom once publicly sang “The Lonely Goatherd” as part of an annual church fundraiser known as “Dinner at Delmonico’s”, which featured singing waiters, a steak dinner and even beer flowing in the church hall (special dispensation was granted beforehand by the Bishop). My Dad encouraged her to sing that song – accompanied by a piano. Maybe Pop saw some Maria in Mom as well. Singing solo in front of an audience belied Mom’s nature, but as long as it helped the cause, she went for it and I recall her telling Pop, “I may need a few extra sips of the beer”. Then she went out there and nailed it just like Julie Andrews did.
I’m not sure how many people know my Mom was an excellent and fearless seamstress. There was no challenge Mom would not tackle. She made many of her own dresses, as well as so many for Karen in her early years, including her formal gown for her senior prom. She made matching sets of tote bags and duffel bags for the entire family. People would ask where we bought them. They told us they tried to find them in all their usual stores and catalogues to no avail. She made bed sheets and cushion upholstery for the odd contours of our small boats – and they fit every time. She even brought home an industrial sewing machine for heavy duty marine canvas and sailcloth – and she actually built sails for our sailing “chick pram” dinghy, and blueprinted and patterned a new mainsail for our 1898 vintage Crosby Cat Boat called “Grayling.” Recently, Mom sewed a complete new set of clerical vestments for Karen’s husband Hugh.
Mom’s love of God and church grounded all of us. She set the example. She was the church secretary at Christ Church, Babylon, sang in the choir every Sunday, served on the Altar Guild, and ran the Christ Church Holiday Fair year after year.
One notable memory is the shop she invented for that Fair – the shop was known as “Labors of Love.” She set the tone, providing the base inventory for the shop by painting on rocks and selling them as paperweights, getting families involved by tracing their shadows and then mounting the children’s profiles on wooden plaques. She made wonderful Christmas ornaments, hand painted plaques and glassware, customized Christmas decorations, sewed Christmas napkin sets, table cloths, pot holders and aprons. She also baked until our house smelled like cookies all the way down the block. Our house was a veritable Christmas factory in the months leading up to that Fair.
One year, our dog had nine puppies in late October. Mom who suggested that we set up a pet shop at that year’s Fair. They sold all of the puppies, and all kinds of handmade leashes, dog collars, and dog dishes and the shop became a magnet for the children of Babylon that were within biking distance. This practically doubled the attendance (as well as the Holiday Fair proceeds) that year.
Karen and I would stop in the church every day for lunch or movie money, as her office was a short walk from home. Stopping by the church everyday had enormous influence on us in retrospect – especially Karen, who went on to Divinity School at Duke University – where, incidentally, Karen met her future husband Hugh. Mom inspired her greatly.
Mom was a child of nature. Our Grandmother told us that when Mom was five years old, the family went out one morning on a nature walk. They walked around a bend in the trail where they encountered a medium sized copperhead snake curled up in the center of the trail. Everyone stopped - except for my Mom. She gleefully jumped over the snake and then turned around and was surprised to see no one else had followed her. That was Mom.
Born in the Midwest, she was not a “salt” by nature or experience, but when we moved east to Babylon, Long Island in 1963, she became one. She learned all the right knots to tie, and handled the anchor, tended the dinghy, and rowed to shore when need be. And lit the kerosene lamps on board. And cooked gourmet meals in the oddest of cooking situations whether aboard or on the beach. (I can tell you first hand that a 22 foot Catboat built in 1898 does not come with a gourmet kitchen). When we were kids, she one the one who cut up the worms and squid and taught us how to bait our hooks. She was the one who jumped over the side of boat to teach us how to tread for clams. She taught us how to filet flounder, and just about every species of fish we hooked. She led the crabbing expeditions, whether on the Babylon Dock or on the boat trolling under the Captree Bridge.
Nowadays it’s easy to underestimate her professional accomplishments, which were many. Mom never had the opportunity to go to college, but before Karen and I were born, she worked for Doubleday and Company and The Hempstead Bank before she became a full time housewife and mother. As we grew to age 10 or 11, she sold for the Fuller Brush Company, because she could set her own hours, later became the Church Secretary, a job she literally lived and loved.
As Karen and I prepared for college, Mom went to work as an executive secretary for The Carnation Company, and after a year or so of learning the business, she applied for a salesman’s position. She knew from her Fuller Brush days that she liked people and enjoyed selling, so she added her resume to a pile of resumes that she had been collecting for Carnation for evaluation. However, this was 1972, and Carnation had never hired a woman for what had traditionally been considered “a man’s job”. In fact, in 1972, almost no company ever had hired a woman to fill a sales position. But her boss, upon studying her resume, and the fact that Mom had put together a presentation about herself, complete with easels, charts and business plans – came out of his office and offered her the job, and the rest is history. She was the first female sales rep in the history of the Carnation Company (now Nestle Foods), and in her ten year tenure, she was named “Salesman of the Year” nine times. She preferred the title of “Salesman”, never embracing the titles of “Salesperson”, or “Sales Representative”. She did not consider herself to be a “Women’s Libber”; she just wanted to be known as a “Salesman” like everyone else. She was my inspiration, and I was fortunate to have the time to tell her that more than once in the weeks before she passed away.
My mother was remarkably selfless. Despite a series of strokes followed by an unfortunate fall one could be forgiven for forgetting that she was wheelchair bound. Why? Because my Mom never, ever complained about it or let it define her. She was independent and refused to let the limit her. She still drove, did housework, tended her garden, cooked and baked, hosted us for every visit we made, and almost never let us push her wheelchair. She was independence and proud.
But she was not proud of her own accomplishments nearly as much she was of her of grandchildren. First was Karen and Hugh’s daughter Katherine, followed by Diane’s and my three children, Chip, Kylie and Chase. She told me in detail how proud she was of all four of them. She swelled with pride about everything they ever accomplished, and everything they did.
In addition, Mom was more than a grandmother to Katherine; she was her second mother for the past five years, filling the space as best she could that was left in everyone’s heart when Karen passed away in the summer of 2009. They shared a relationship that was truly special - one for the ages.
Whether you knew her as Mom, Grandma, Aunt Carol, Mrs. G, or just plain Carol, you know that Mom led a good life, left behind a great legacy, and was a symbol of goodness and strength that inspired all of us lucky enough to have known her. Heaven now has a new angel and Karen and Pop have Mom with them now and they are all three smiling, because they know everything will be eventually be OK. She was my inspiration and role model and I am lucky she was my mother.