James Wilks Fant

COLUMBIA - Funeral services for James Wilks Fant will be held at 3 p.m. Tuesday, June 10, at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 1100 Sumter Street, Columbia, S.C. Burial will be afterwards in the churchyard.

Mr. Fant died June 6, 2008. The family will receive friends at 1742 Graeme Drive (between Roslyn Drive and Clemson Avenue), Columbia, S.C. 29206.

Mr. Fant is survived by his wife, Christie Zimmerman Fant, their elder son, Dr. James Wilks Fant Jr., his wife, Margaret Macdonald Fant, and their children, Claiborne Macdonald Fant, James Wilks Fant III, Roderick Cunningham Fant, and William Tennent Fant; and their younger son, Simpson Zimmerman Fant, his wife Katherine Williams Fant, and their children Katherine Powers Fant, Caroline Hunter Fant, Simpson Zimmerman Fant Jr., and Hal Williams Fant, all of Columbia. He is also survived by one brother, John Roy Fant Jr. and his wife, June Heffron Fant, of Lyman, S.C.; and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins. He was predeceased by his brothers, Colonel Murray Gibbes Fant, Robert Gibbes Fant, Alexander Scott Fant, Nat Hunter Fant, and his sister, Caroline Hunter Fant (Mrs. T. Stokes) Adams Jr.

Honorary pallbearers will be Edwin Houseal Betsill, George Sease Betsill, Dr. E. Macdonald DuBose Jr., Frank Jones Brunson, Joseph Edward Dixon, Colonel Robert Nelson DuRant, Samuel Beard King Jr., James Edgar Mayes Jr. and William Leonard Still.

James Fant was the third son of John Roy Fant and Caroline Nathalie Hunter Fant. He was born August 12, 1920, in Lockhart, SC, where his father was head of the Lockhart Mill, one of the three Monarch Cotton Mills founded in Union County by his grandfather, John Alexander Fant, at the turn of the 20th century.

James Fant attended the University of South Carolina in Columbia and the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. Prior to graduation, he was called into the service of his country. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army from 1942 until the end of the War in 1945, stationed in England, France and Belgium. The heavy bombing of England by the Germans during the 18 months he was stationed in England inspired his lifelong admiration of the character and courage of the British.

Since the 1940s, he has made his home in Columbia, where his mother had grown up in the home of her grandparents and where he had many relatives and friends.

He was a patriotic American and a Southern gentleman, devoted to his church, family and friends and faithful to the values, standards and traditions of his heritage. During his lifetime, his favorite areas of service were with his church - assisting with Trinity’s Sunday School and cooking quantities of pickles and preserves for the annual church bazaar for over fifty years. He also particularly enjoyed serving as secretary and treasurer, for 17 years, of Columbia’s Quadrille Club and its dinner dances.

Friends will remember him as a talented amateur chef and they will also remember the many memories he shared -- of the seven Fant children growing up in Lockhart, of the six brothers going off to war in the Marines, Air Corps, and Army to the South Pacific, Italy, England, and France, and all coming safely home -- of college days at Carolina, where all the six brothers were members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, and where they made lifelong friends from all around South Carolina.

The fifth generation of his family to worship at Trinity, James Fant will be buried beside his great-grandparents and other beloved kinfolks.

The family suggests that memorials may be made to the building preservation fund of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 1100 Sumter Street, Columbia, SC 29201. Dunbar Funeral Home is assisting the family.

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www.dunbarfunerals.com