Nettie Spraker Allen

NASHVILLE, TN Funeral services for Nettie Rose Spraker Allen, 92, will be held on Thursday, June 18, 2015, at 11 AM, following a 10:30 AM visitation, at Wilkerson Funeral Home in Reidsville, NC. Burial will follow immediately at Greenview Cemetery. A memorial service will be held on Friday, June 19, 2015, at 2PM at Bethel United Methodist Church, Columbia, SC. A reception for friends and relatives will follow in Poole Hall. Mrs. Allen died Friday, June 12, 2015, in Nashville, TN. Born in Maryville, TN and the only child of Ralph Ragan Spraker and Nettie Ledbetter Spraker, she grew up surrounded by lots of boisterous aunts, uncles, and cousins. Nettie learned to sew at an early age, later helping pay her expenses at Maryville College by sewing for “Maryville Maid” during WWII. She graduated in 1944 with a degree in Home Economics, taking her first job as Director of Religious Education at Main Street Methodist Church, Reidsville, NC. There she met Holt Allen who had returned home to run Allen Coal Co during his father’s illness. They married in September 1945 on a Tennessee day so hot the candles melted. The couple lived in Reidsville where four children had arrived by 1954. Nettie put her “home ec” knowledge to good use during those years, sewing most of her children’s clothes, cooking, overseeing conscripted labor (those four children), and a large vegetable garden used for many meals and canning for the winter. Nettie returned to the workforce in 1960 at Annie Penn Memorial Hospital, but quickly landed at Rockingham County Welfare Department , entering a field in which she worked in Reidsville and in Charlotte, NC. In Columbia, SC, she worked at the SC Children’s Bureau with adoption services, sometimes driving babies across the state to their new homes, a welcome change from observing sadder situations in earlier work. Nettie was Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Richland and Lexington Counties in the early 1970’s She began her final work chapter with her husband at the family business, Westside Ice, bought when they moved to Columbia in 1969. During her later working years, Nettie experienced increasing hearing loss, a condition that greatly affected her life from that point on. Her passion became advocating for the hard of hearing, working with SHHH (Self Help for the Hard of Hearing), a national organization now called Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA), to create a local chapter called PALCO. Her expanding advocacy during the years prior to passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) led to her involvement not only on the local level but also on the state level with telephone services for the hard of hearing (RELAY/711) and on the national level as Executive Treasurer of the SHHH Executive Board for several years. We remember and benefit from Nettie’s work when we see or use 711, public TT’s/ TTY’s, SC’s free telephone hearing equipment program, captioning and equipment in movies theaters and on TV’s at home and in public accommodations. Always active Methodists, Nettie and Holt were deeply involved with their cherished Holroyd Class at Bethel United Methodist Church in Columbia, beginning their international travels with class members. She considered their greatest gift to Bethel to be the church history they researched and wrote together, “Bethel United Methodist Church: A Sesqui-Centennial History, 1835 – 1985.” As her public involvement diminished, Nettie devoted her time to home, family, friends, and the post-stroke care of her husband Holt. Following his death in 2003, Nettie lived in Forest Pines Retirement Home for seven years. After a stroke in 2012, Nettie moved near her son Jim and wife Deb in Nashville. Surviving are her children, Jane Allen Arens (Dave Hoffman) of Melbourne, FL, Louise Allen Hamer (David Eisenhauer) of Columbia, SC, Col. Robert H Allen, USAF (Ret) (Debbie) of Ewa Beach, HI, and James R. Allen (Deb), of Nashville, TN; 9 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren. The family would like to express gratitude and thanks to all who appreciated, supported, and kept in touch with Nettie throughout her life. In lieu of flowers, memorials would be appreciated for the good works being done by: Bethel United Methodist Church, 4600 Daniel Drive, Columbia, SC 29206; Harvest Hope Food Bank, PO Box 451, Columbia, SC 29202; or Hearing Loss Association of America, online at www.hearingloss.org or to HLAA Development Office, 7910 Woodmont Ave., Suite 1200, Bethesda, MD 20814.