Former Hilton Head pastor Houston dies at age 96

The Rev. Charles Houston Sr., a beloved Hilton Head Island pastor and civic leader, died Tuesday at his home on Marshland Road. He was 96.

Houston received the 2004 Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award for Hilton Head and was active in the Native Island Business and Community Affairs Association.

He served on a mayoral committee researching the needs of Ward 1 residents and was honored by the local Democratic Party in 2005.

Houston's genteel demeanor defied his challenging childhood in the coal fields of Kentucky, where he studied in a one-room schoolhouse and drifted in and out of foster homes and trouble. At 17, he was mentored by a Methodist minister who encouraged him to go to Morehouse College in Atlanta.

"My peers, some of them were moving on. I was standing still," Houston later recalled. "So I rejoined the church, made a reaffirmation of faith, and that did it. The wandering was over."

At Morehouse, he met and married Spelman College student Mary Patterson, daughter of Alexander and Mariah Patterson of Hilton Head. Her father farmed and ran Patterson's Grocery on Marshland Road. The Houstons moved to the island as newlyweds in 1938. Mary Houston taught school on the island while Charles attended Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Houston served as minister of Shiloh Baptist Church in Tuckahoe, N.Y., for 45 years. With their four children, the Houstons spent every August on Hilton Head. Charles and Mary returned for good in 1991, building a home they called "Mary Field" on the shores of Broad Creek.

For 12 years, Houston was associate pastor at Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church under the Rev. Ben Williams, who will lead the funeral service at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Francis By the Sea Catholic Church on Beach City Road. Visitation will be at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Mount Calvary church on Squire Pope Road. Burial will be in the Elliott Cemetery in Hilton Head Plantation.