Edna Adams Bowman

COLUMBIA - Mrs. Edna Adams Bowman, 93, of 3200 Grand Street in Columbia, a longtime member of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) religious congregation, and the widow of Columbia businessman Heyward C. Bowman, Sr., passed away Wednesday, September 28, 2011, in Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Born in Hopkins, South Carolina, to Johnson and Lula Greene Adams on January 28, 1918, she was one of eleven children. She is the last of the eleven to pass away.

Her parents were farmers who used their land to grow crops to feed their children and other relatives as well as nearby neighbors in need, regardless of color, race or religion. The extended families included many whose children moved twenty miles to Columbia to attend college or to begin their careers, or to marry, while others moved North with the Great Migration â€' as five of Mrs. Bowman's ten siblings did.

After completing the local "colored" school in Hopkins, she met Columbia native and businessman Heyward C. Bowman, son of one of the strong leaders in "Lower" Waverly in the City of Columbia. His father, Julius Franklin Bowman, Irmo native, was Secretary-Treasurer of the Columbia Conference of the AME Church and the founder/builder of Chappelle Station AME Church at 1101 Pine Street in Columbia. The Historic Columbia Foundation published RETRACE in 2010, highlighting the Bowman Family, including text and family pictures.

Mrs. Bowman, moved into a new house at 1111 Pine Street where her husband used the spacious land to enlarge his dray business inherited from his father. With the successful dray business the first of its kind in Columbia, as recorded in the history book on the Bowman family, she never worked outside the home. Instead, she was a loving and supportive wife and a truly caring mother to the son and daughter of this family: Heyward, Jr. and Louella. She also kept a special kind of vigilance on the neighborhood, especially the children.

With her children now grown and in college or in industry, her husband moved to a smaller but more beautiful house at 3200 Grand Street in Columbia where Mrs. Bowman continued her attending church, creating new recipes, and entertaining her visiting sisters and brothers as well as other family members â€' hers and those of her husband.

Following the death of her husband, she began to decline in health, thereby moving to Oklahoma City to live with her daughter. However, nothing else changed in her home on Grand Street, so that whenever she returned to visit at intervals, she was truly "AT HOME." And, her relatives and friends came to visit!

Mrs. Bowman's deceased direct relatives are Heyward C. Bowman Sr. (husband), Heyward C. Bowman Jr. (son), Dianne Leggett (granddaughter); sisters: Mattie Chavis, Sarah Thompson, Phyllis Gallman, Nan Robinson, Mae Fisher, Judy Adams, Lottie Taylor; brothers: Clarence Adams, Julius Adams and Louis Adams.

Her immediate surviving relatives are daughter, Mrs. Louella Bowman Hunter, Oklahoma City; granddaughter, Bridget Thomas (Robert), Cleveland, Tennessee. There are also five great-grandchildren, three great-great-grandchildren, nephews and nieces â€' including South Carolina's prominent educator, Dr. Marianna W. Davis, and cousins and other relatives.

Mrs. Bowman's funeral will be held Saturday, October 8, 2011, at 1:00 p.m. at Chappelle Memorial AME Church, 1101 Pine Street, Columbia, SC 29205. Visitation will be held Friday, October 7, 2011, from 3:00 to 9:00 p.m. Mrs. Bowman will be placed in the church a hour prior to service. J.P. Holley Funeral Home, 8132 Garner's Ferry Road, Columbia, SC (29209) is in charge of the arrangements.

Interment will take place at the Gates of Heaven Cemetery on Heyward Brockington Road in Columbia.

The funeral cortege will assemble at the residence at 12:15.p.m. www.jpholley.com