Miss Hannah Pearlstine (r) and her aid Ruth Moye attend the 1955 Class Reunion of Columbia High School

One by one, class members at the reunion watched for their chance to sit down and chat with their former homeroom teacher, Miss Pearlstine, as she sat at a round table in a Clarion Town House ballroom last weekend. The claret– colored pashmina around her slender shoulders was the same color as her nail polish and lipstick.

Students gather on the front steps of old Columbia High School Guided by advice from the two aids accompanying Pearlstine, Columbia High former students opted to sit on their honored guest’s left side to make it easier for her to hear them over the sounds of beach music, laughter, and chatter. About half the crowd had gathered on the veranda overlooking Gervais Street while the others mingled inside or shagged to early Motown records.

Miss Hannah Pearlstine as history department head at Columbia High Schoool in 1961 Students and Pearlstine had stayed in touch over the years. Dr. David Rembert, USC biology and botany professor emeritus, hung onto the reply his homeroom teacher had written him following his note to her when she turned 100. He keeps it tucked inside the pages of his 1955 yearbook.

“We thought she was old when we were in school,” Rembert admitted. “We never imagined we would turn 45, much less 68 – or that she would still be with us 50 years later.” Dr. Bernie Dunlap, now president of Wofford College, added he was pretty sure Pearlstine had taught his mother.

Miss Hannah Pearlstine’s homeroom class (part of the graduating class of 1937) Front row: Helen Sribnick, Sarah Tompkins, Alice Cormac, Juanita Nicholson, Mary Elizabeth Lahey, and Hannah Pearlstine. Second row: Molly Mathias, Florrie Hill, Christie Zimmerman, Olivia Gillespie, Julia Simpson, and Virginia Hodges. Third row: Araminta Green, Ann Blair, Mary Hamby, Kathleen Caughman, Mary Hull Kaminer, Billy Reckling, and Jane Perry. Fourth row: Claudius Creason, Grace Bailey, Sarah Hensley, Gabriel Joseph, and Virginia Davis. Fifth row: Jimmie Woollen, Harvey Anderson, Phil Adams, Hart Kohn, and John Duckett. Top row: Robert Seabrook, Frank Horton, Buddy DuBose, and Roy Pearce. Perhaps one former student, even more than the others, has stayed in communication with Pearlstine over the years. Dr. Dunbar Godbold, now retired as dentist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, spends a good bit of leisure time in Topsail, NC, a coastal resort. Pearlstine lives nearby in a senior retirement center apartment in Wilmington, NC.

“My wife and I have visited Hannah often when we were in the area because she’s a good person, and we just enjoy her. “As soon as I mentioned the reunion, she said she wanted to go,” said Godbold.

Getting a 102– year–old from Wilmington to Columbia might have been problematic, but not for Godbold. “I have a really good friend, Gene Tickner, who lives at Topsail. I asked him if he would bring Hannah, as well as Cathy and Ruth, her aids, to Columbia for the reunion. Godbold, reunion committee treasurer, knew he would not be able to be in two places at once.

Did Tickner transport the 102–year old Pearlstine and her two aids in a special vehicle? “If you consider a BMW special, then, yeah,” said Godbold’s friend. Pearlstine’s wheelchair in Wilmington would not fit in the BMW cargo space, filled to capacity by the luggage of three females, so Godbold rented one at Hawthorne Pharmacy and had it waiting when his former teacher arrived in Columbia.

“Tickner not only got them here safely, he helped me get her up our steps in the wheelchair in the pouring rain, then cooked steaks for us all the Friday night before the reunion,” Godbold said. At the reunion, Tickner sat at the table with Pearlstine and her aids, blending into the reunion crowd as though he had been in the Class of ’55.

The reunion got an early start with a hospitality hour hosted at Senate Plaza by the reunion’s chairman, Billy Smith. Pearlstine was the honored guest there as she was at the main event. Perhaps the moment in all the reunion activities that class members say they will never forget was the talk Pearlstine gave.

“When it was time for us to present her cake, she stood, blew out her candles, and spoke,” reported Rembert. She said she was glad to be here, and that she was having a good time. She was so elegant and eloquent, she could have been Katharyn Hepburn. She said it wasn’t true she had no children. “I’ve had 5,000,” she told us. Her voice carried so that we could all hear her just fine.

Pearlstine was recognized as an educator many times during her long career. Godbold recalled that she was once named SC Jewish woman of the year.

Pearlstine’s family members from Columbia plan to travel to Wilmington later this month for the official celebration of her 102nd birthday.