Hardy Oliver, Sr.

Graveside services for Caldwell Hardy Oliver, Sr., 95, will be held at 11:00 a.m. Thursday, August 24, 2006 at Magnolia Cemetery. Fr. Michael Ridgill will officiate with burial in Magnolia Cemetery directed by Brown-Pennington-Atkins Funeral Home. The family will receive friends from 4 to 7:00 p.m. Wednesday evening at the home of his son, Dr. Hardy Oliver Jr., at 408 Cove View Point, Lake Murray. Mr. Oliver was born November 20, 1910 at the Norfolk, Virginia home of his grandfather, Caldwell Hardy, a prominent Norfolk banker, and grew up in the Shandon section of Columbia. He was the son of Sewall Kemble Oliver and Lucy Hardy Oliver, and grandson of Charles Kemble Oliver, President of the Columbia Mill Co. He had an older brother, Sewall Kemble Oliver, Jr., and a younger sister, Lucy Hines Brooks. He graduated from Mercersburg Academy, Yale University, and the Yale University School of Architecture. Mr. Oliver was an architect by profession and an artist in watercolor and oil painting by avocation. His pen-and-ink drawings of historic Columbia buildings were published in “Sketches of Columbia.” He started the practice of architecture in Hartsville, S. C. where he met and married his first wife of 56 years, Eleanor McKinnon, in 1936. He subsequently operated his own architectural firm in Columbia in the late 1930's and 1945-1955. During World War II, he was employed by the Army Engineers in Charleston, S. C., and in the “secret city” of Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the uranium material for the atomic bomb was produced. He was cited by Defense Secretary Henry Stimson for his contribution to the Manhattan Project. After the war, he resumed his practice in Columbia, served as President of the SC Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and designed many schools, churches and other public buildings and private residences throughout South Carolina, including his design of the Lawton Music Building at Eleanor’s alma mater, Coker College in Hartsville, S. C. His work on the Lawton Building led to his work 1955-1972 as a staff architect at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he personally designed the University Band Building, and served as local architectural liaison between the university administration and the outside architectural firms, throughout the United States, hired to design new buildings, as the university expanded to an enrollment of 30,000 students. One of his significant achievements was a $7 million project which doubled the size of the Student Union Building. He and Eleanor were active members of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Champaign for many years. In 1977, he retired to Hartsville with Eleanor until her death in 1993. He subsequently married a fellow artist, Mary Beth Stokes, and moved to an Episcopal retirement home in Atlanta. Some months after Mary Beth’s severe memory loss caused her involuntary relocation to the infirmary wing of the home, he was persuaded to return to Columbia in 2004 to be closer to family, and resided at the SC Episcopal Home at Still Hopes (www.sceh.org) in West Columbia. During his retirement in Hartsville, he and Eleanor were members of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church and, on his return to Columbia, he rejoined Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. He was preceded in death by his parents, brother, and sister. Surviving are his second wife; two sons, Dr. Caldwell Hardy Oliver, Jr., and wife, Ann, of Columbia, S. C., and Milton McKinnon Oliver and wife, Joan, of Canton, MA; six grandchildren, Katherine, Margaret, Tom, John, James, and Lindsay; and various nieces and nephews in Columbia, Camden, Irmo, Charlotte NC, Tarboro NC, Arlington VA and Colorado Springs, CO. The family thanks the staff of Still Hopes for their kind and compassionate care of their family member. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Still Hopes or Trinity Cathedral Foundation.

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Hardy Oliver, Sr.

November 20, 1910 - August 21, 2006