Ann Leonard Hitt

Ann Leonard Hitt, 97, of Charleston, SC, widow of Robert M. "Red" Hitt, Jr., entered into eternal rest Friday, July 31, 2015. Her funeral service will be held Monday, August 3, 2015, in St. Philip's Church, 142 Church Street, at 11:00 a.m. Interment, St. Philip's Churchyard. Arrangements by J. HENRY STUHR, INC., DOWNTOWN CHAPEL.

Ann, who would have been 98 years old this September 7th, takes with her a Charleston that now exists almost entirely in myth. The daughter of John Thomas Leonard and Clara Ashmead Pringle, she grew up on Tradd Street near King. She remembered when no one said they were "going" to the Isle of Palms, but moved there since the trip was an all-day affair involving numerous ferries. She claimed she was in the family's convertible Packard when they became the second car to drive across the new bridge, finished in 1929.

She was a member of a generation of Charlestonians for whom the world ended somewhere north of Broad, maybe Calhoun street. The Charleston she inhabited could never be charted by Google's algorithm. There was not a house on any street in which she could not discourse on its current inhabitants and all previous ones-and, to her, people and events outside of this place and these people held very little interest.

She also loved to tell the story about how her grandfather, Walter Pringle, sold off the living room of the Col. John Stuart House to some Yankee museum because he needed the cash. The buyers replaced the room with imitations, and the resulting hue and cry from Walter's own friends resulted in the first of Charleston's many Preservation Societies. You can see Walter's old living room, now in a Minnesota museum, right here: http://www.artsconnected.org/resource/4195/7/charleston-drawing-room

She told the story about how the devastation of America's costliest war was never far away in Charleston. She remembered her great-grandmother, Margaret Johnston Buist, who also almost made it to 100. Margaret had married a doctor, Somers, who had left early on to serve as a medic for the Confederacy. When the war was over, Margaret was living in the country then, and as soldiers streamed through the woods, she would direct them around back to where the kitchen cooked meals all day long. One decrepit gaunt beat-down man lingered on the porch as she directed him one more time to the kitchen. "You don't recognize your own husband," Somers asked.

Ann Hitt grew up in a Charleston that was not yet America's Best Preserved Secret or America's number one tourist destination but rather a sleepy old antebellum town inhabited by a bunch of mostly broke old families who struggled to keep paint on their constantly patched up equally old houses. It was in that world that she met the skinniest Citadel graduate-judging from the pictures, maybe ever-Robert M. "Red" Hitt, then the proud author of a sports column in the Charleston News and Courier, called: Hitt's Runs & Errors. She had her own column on the society page, which if memory serves, was called, "Gather Ye Rosebuds." They would "toot the boo"-a phrase she insisted meant only, "drive up and down the battery while your father sang too loudly along with whoever was on the radio," which if you knew Red, rings entirely true. On August 7, 1938, she married him.

During their marriage, they had five children: Joan H. Algar (John) of Mount Pleasant, SC, Dianne H. Moore of Chester, SC and Nancy H. Miller of Mount Pleasant, SC; two sons, Robert M. "Bobby" Hitt, III (Gwen) of Columbia, SC and John T. L. "Jack" Hitt (Lisa Sanders) of New Haven, CT-who produced Doug, Chance, Gardner, Rob, Jimmy, Alychia, Lathan, Lucas, Whitt, Robert Paul, Tarpley, and Yancey, who in turn produced Alex, Ransom, Julia, Rezo, Aurora, Ben, West, Winter, Sadie, and Heath Ann. The family would also like to express their gratitude to those who were so helpful in her care: Cathy Salley and Tarik Robinson.

Memorials may be made to an organization which Ann's namesake and grandmother, Annie Elizabeth Allen Leonard, helped found: The Florence Crittenton Program of SC, 19 St. Margaret Street, Charleston, SC 29403 and/or to St. Philip's Church, 142 Church Street, Charleston, SC 29401.