Nancy Casey Earwood, 90, a longtime resident of Columbia, South Carolina, died peacefully at home on March 14, 2025, in Kernersville, North Carolina.
Nancy will be long remembered by her family for being especially fond of her father’s gentle spirit; for her memories of spending summers as a child with cousins and extended family in Manchester, Tennessee; for creating memorable vacations for her children at the beach and on summer road trips to California and to Canada and later taking special trips “out west” with each grandchild; and for her relentless determination to overcome difficulties, to finish what needed doing and, later, to remain fiercely independent.
As an only child, Nancy considered her friends as family. When she moved to South Carolina with her husband as a young mother, Nancy was driven to create new friends, while staying connected with her school friends, and she accumulated a wealth of memories along the way, often captured in pictures that she kept in a big bowl. Garden club meetings and two bridge clubs led to lifelong friends in Columbia. Summers at the family beach house at North Litchfield, South Carolina, and later at the mountain house in Saluda, North Carolina, offered not only a gathering place for her family but led to a larger circle of friends from Saluda and across the south. In between, Nancy took off with friends for Asia and with her daughter to Europe, once to visit her granddaughter in Spain.
Nancy cherished her dogs, personal gifts (especially jewelry), long-distant phone calls, a good book, every holiday, and visits from her children, grandchildren, and great-grands, so long as no one stayed too long.
Always opinionated, impeccably dressed and ready for conversation.
Nancy Earwood, the daughter of Shrader Burr Casey and Nannie Lee Winton Casey and the widow of Max Earwood, was born in Nashville, Tennessee on September 3, 1934, and raised in Florence, Alabama.
She is survived by her children, Donna Wilson (Joe) of Winston Salem, North Carolina, and Dale Earwood (Kay) of Shreveport, Louisiana; by her grandchildren, Trey Wilson (Sarah) of Germantown, Tennessee, and Kate Masten (Kevin) of Kernersville, North Carolina; and by eight great-grandchildren.
The family would like to thank Sara Garcias who devoted 15 years of daily care, companionship and assistance, and the staff of Forest Lake Presbyterian Church for their support over the last 30 years.
Nancy will be buried at the Manchester Cemetery alongside generations of Casey family members in her beloved Manchester, Tennessee.
