He was known as ‘Fess.’ Beloved Hilton Head principal, community leader Isaac Wilborn dies
The Rev. Isaac Wayman Wilborn Jr. of Elloree, a longtime educator, minister and community leader in Beaufort County and a U.S. Army veteran, died at Hilton Head Medical Center on June 25.
He was 93 years old.
A funeral service is scheduled for noon Monday at Campbell Chapel AME Church on Boundary Street in Bluffton with burial in the Browning Cemetery in Elloree. Viewing is 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday at the church.
Williams Funeral Home of Elloree is handling arrangements.
Wilborn was the father of four children. His daughter, Sharon Brown, said friends may contact her at 803-974-0372 or call the funeral home.
In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting scholarship donations to either the Ella C. White Memorial Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 21284, Hilton Head SC 29925; or the Rev. Isaac W. Wilborn Jr. Scholarship Fund, Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, P.O. Box 23019, Hilton Head SC 29925.
Education elder
Wilborn graduated from Orangeburg County Trade School in 1946 at the age of 16. He later earned a bachelor’s degree from Allen University and a master’s degree from South Carolina State University. He also studied at Erskine Theological Seminary, Savannah State College and George Peabody College.
He was a teacher first at Bluffton Graded School, the town’s elementary school for Black children. He then served as a school principal on Hilton Head Island for more than 27 years.
A 1971 article in The Islander said he was known to generations of islanders as “Fess,” short for “the Professor.”
As the principal of the first Hilton Head Elementary School for Black children in 1955, Wilborn was challenged to lead the replacement of five small plantation schools in Gullah neighborhoods.
“It is interesting, considering the population of the island at that time, that many of our 210 students didn’t know each other before they came to the elementary school,” Wilborn told The Island Packet at the time of his retirement in 1981. “Life revolved around the five ‘plantations’ which were more or less separate communities. ... Each one had a school, a church and rudimentary stores.”
The island’s schools were desegregated between 1969 and 1970, and Wilborn’s administrative duties expanded, The Island Packet reported. In addition to serving as principal of Hilton Head Island Elementary, he also was director of adult education in Beaufort County.
At his Hilton Head Hall of Fame induction in 2017, it was explained that Wilborn also had sounded the horn in the mid 1960s to the need for a daycare program for working mothers. In 1967 his call was answered by people from all across the island with the establishment of the nonprofit Children’s Center.
In 1988, the Beaufort County Board of Education voted to name the main road to the island’s public schools campus Wilborn Road in honor of Wilborn and his wife Ramona, who was a teacher for 33 years and died in 2010.
Community leader
Wilborn, the son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister, was himself ordained as a minister in 1991. During his tenure as pastor of two different congregations, he was instrumental in building a new sanctuary and fellowship hall at Campbell Chapel AME in Bluffton and also ministered at Allen Chapel AME in Beaufort.
He retired from the ministry in October 2004.
In addition to working with many community organizations, he served as chairman of the board of directors of Palmetto Electric Cooperative and was a board member of Hilton Head Regional Medical Center. He was an organizing member of WHHR Radio Station, the island’s first radio station, and Hilton Head National Bank.
He was inducted into the South Carolina Black Hall of Fame in 2005.
While Wilborn got involved with The Boys and Girls Club, a local museum and a senior citizens club in Elloree, he also enjoyed doing puzzles and had a small garden, said Brown, his daughter.
She explained that her father enjoyed a laid-back life in his later years.
“He just enjoyed coming and sitting on the front porch and listening to the radio and talking to people who came by.”
This story was originally published June 29, 2023 at 11:53 AM.
