At 98 years old, Loris resident Jean Powell Dozier still knows how to work a crowd.
She’s got wit.
“Are you reading the right one?” she asked Mayor Todd Harrelson as he was reading a proclamation honoring her lifetime of service to the city.
The crowd, full of her colleagues, neighbors, friends and family, erupted in laughter.
She then held her cane like a baseball bat and pretended to hit Harrelson. And again, her loved ones looked on with loving amusement.
A long-time lover of blue jeans, Dozier has style, too.
Sarah Smith of the Waccamaw Regional Council of Governments, who has known Dozier for about 30 years, said Dozier is always dressed well.
When she walked into her surprise party held in the lobby of Anderson Brothers Bank on Highway 701 in Loris on Tuesday, thrown by her good friend Lisa Rife, the vice president of the branch, Dozier was dressed as if the party wasn’t a surprise at all.
Her splashes of yellow across her blue floral button down matched the party decor perfectly. And the golden sparkly sash Rife put on her that read, “aged to perfection,” matched it, too.
Dozier is usually a step ahead of everyone else it seems. She asked Smith to tell the crowd about the time she accurately predicted Smith’s pregnancy almost 19 years ago after she told Dozier she wasn’t feeling well during a conference. Now, Smith is the mother of a recent high school graduate.
“[Dozier] contributed a tremendous part of herself to our wellbeing,” Harrelson said during the proclamation that declared May 23 Jean Powell Dozier Day in Loris.
“It was a one-horse town,” Dozier said about Loris, referring to when she first moved there with her late husband in the 1950s. “I didn’t think anybody had a name.”
Dozier, an outgoing and friendly lady, elaborated, saying that when she first moved to Loris, while it was a small town, the area didn’t yet have that everybody-knows-everybody feel that it has today. People were not as neighborly as they are today in Loris, she said.
Harrelson thinks Dozier has a lot to do with that shift in attitude. She brings people together, he said.
He told the crowd that she is responsible for earning the city a $1 million grant that brought the city’s public safety building to fruition. The grant was originally for $500,000, but Dozier has a way of exceeding expectations, he added.
She has been on the board of the Waccamaw Regional Council of Governments since the '90s and was reappointed 11 times. She has served 12 terms.
When asked about herself and about her accomplishments, Dozier refers to her loved ones. “My neighbors could tell you more,” she says.
She grew up with only sisters and said she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“We never spoke an unkind word to each other,” she said.
Her best friend and sister, Bobbie Powell Parker, passed away earlier this year. “She was the prettiest thing,” Dozier said.
Dozier said her family had a lot of musical talent and when asked if she had any, Dozier said, “No, I just like to help people.”
A bank customer who Dozier had never met walked up and congratulated Dozier on making it to 98.
“I thought you were bringing me a check,” Dozier said, smiling.
Dozier turned 98 on May 13 and is beloved by her two sons and a city full of friends and lives she’s touched.
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