During Women's History Month, Wofford College celebrates the women who have helped shape the college’s history.
By Sarah Parlet
Anne Springs Close surprised her doctors one day when she showed up with an injury they normally only saw in professional athletes. Close did too many sit-ups and pulled a muscle in her abdomen. She was 86 at the time.
“My mother did not put up with the old-fashioned ideas of women,” says her daughter, Dr. Katy Close ’83, who has followed her mother’s footsteps in service on the Wofford College Board of Trustees. “She was a tough cookie. She once went on a backpacking trip in the middle of the wilderness at 90 years old, promising me it was her last one. She tripped over a root, cut her arm open and tied it up with a bandana.”
Anne Springs Close was not only a trailblazer but also a devoted mother to eight children, grandmother to 26 and great-grandmother to 26 at the time of her death on Aug. 20, 2021. She rarely missed a life event, enthusiastically attending more than 60 graduations.
Dr. Joe Lesesne, president emeritus, met Close when working on a statewide committee to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial. When the college was considering residential co-education, he called on Close, who had helped Winthrop College do the same thing. Once again, he was impressed with her, and she agreed to serve on the college’s board of trustees and help the college navigate the change. She was the first woman to serve on the board.
“Anne Close was the mother of co-education at Wofford,” says Lesesne. “She understood the landscape, the challenges and the benefits. She opened the college to new supporters and was really good at working with other board members. Anne was about as down to earth as it gets.”
According to Lesesne, when Close was asked to lead the board, “They wanted to call her chairperson. Anne said, ‘I’ve waited a long time to be a chairman, I don’t want to be a chairperson.’ So she became chairman (1984-86) of the board and served well.” Close served two terms on the board from 1974 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 1996.
“My mother loved Wofford. When my father died, the first people I saw at our house were Joe Lesesne and Wofford faculty, and they were the first people that made mama cry,” says Katy Close.
Close traveled to 60 countries during her lifetime, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro three times, the most recent at the age of 78. At 65 years old, she completed the New York marathon, persisting through an ankle sprain suffered at mile three. Close also was a pioneering force in conservation, land preservation and natural history throughout South Carolina, serving as the visionary founder of the Anne Springs Close Greenway, a 2,100-acre nature conservancy in Fort Mill, South Carolina.