The Shuler Family: The right words are worth the wait.

By Priscilla Shuler | Photos By Tori Steyne

Time constraints rule the lives of most responsible individuals. Shuler was encompassed by such boundaries... putting off the inner drives surfacing within her brain from her early childhood. Awarded abundant talents from the DNA of ancestors Shuler was subverted from displaying openly anything constructive by her bipolar/genius father. Never allowed nor encouraged to accomplish anything out of the ordinary; only in school classrooms was she able to display glimmers of her abilities.

Running away from home, after her 18th birthday, she was ill-prepared to take on the world, but her fish-out-of-water reality became the constructive force to provide her with a ‘sink or swim‘ decision. She quickly learned to swim.

Living (by invitation) 55 miles from home in Columbia, South Carolina with the older brother‘s family of her best friend, Joni Blackmon, she began work at the Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company on Lady Street.

After a couple/three months, Joni received a call from her boyfriend - John. His best friend had just broken up with his girlfriend and NEEDED a date for the upcoming weekend. This quandary led Joni to beg Priscilla to accept this blind date.

She told Joni: “I‘ll go with the first one that arrives.” (Priscilla usually dated a young man that drove from Saluda, South Carolina to see her.) The weekend arrived and the first young man to arrive was Baron Crawford – from Saluda.

Priscilla answered his knock and promptly informed Baron that she was sorry but had another date... Needless to say, he wasn‘t happy and drove away in a screech of tires and dust. Priscilla wondered if she‘d burned one bridge too many in the dismissal of her ‘steady‘. Baron was so ‘steady‘ that he never made a date... just assumed Priscilla would be available to go out. They‘d been seeing each other for quite a while.

Later, standing behind the curtains, she watched as John and a nice-looking young man strode up the paved walkway. (BELIEVE THIS) The silent voice of God entered the brain of the onlooker and she heard the words: “This is the man you will marry.”

December 17, 1950, was the date of their meeting. March 22, 1951, they married. That was 71 years ago. FYI, when God puts a couple together, it sticks.

But back to time constraints. From 1951 until 2000, Priscilla was busy with her family. Ever one to place her Beloveds first in her list of priorities, it would not be until she turned 75 years of age in 2008 that she would become convinced that then was the time for her first writing foray.

During the interim years, she was busy with myriad accomplishments. Taking advantage of their years in France (where she birthed their 4th child) she learned their language and enlarged her coasts. Back stateside and Command and General Staff College for her husband in Leavenworth, Kansas -the 1963 November when President Kennedy was assassinated. Then 1964 and back to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland. There in early 1966, her husband received orders to Vietnam.

The family decided to locate back home to South Carolina and took 45 days of leave to build 45 days‘ worth of a house for the duration of Bill‘s absence. In July ‘66 the family was roofing at midnight to try to take advantage of cooler temperatures. All four children were on the tar-papered roof while their parents pounded the limber shingles into place. As each child fell to sleep, Priscilla would make sure they were perpendicular to the edge, so if they rolled over, they‘d still be atop their home.

Upon his return in 1967, the family bought a home in Alexandria, Virginia, while he was stationed in the Pentagon. After 3 years, orders were received for Germany. They sold that house and installed their eldest child at the University of Maryland in Munich. The other three children attended American Schools near the Kaserne. Priscilla was soon granted the opportunity to receive professional art lessons from Herr Joachin Ludwig for 3 years. This privilege added to her already extensive talent for painting. Using mostly oils, she sold most of her work while overseas in Germany.

She also designed and sewed garments for her two beautiful daughters, among other endeavors, and while following her Army Officer husband for 25 years, she took advantage of foreign cultures, languages, and educations. Embracing some, discarding others. Her children all gleaned magnificent educations from these ordered moves.

Upon her husband‘s retirement from the Army in 1975, they finished the last half of the house that was begun in 1966. In essence, Priscilla had come full circle. Born in 1932 in Whitmire, Newberry County, and in 1975 settling in Chappells-Newberry County.

Her husband built a two-story workshop to house the multitude of heavy equipment necessary for building large structures as well as small crafted items in wood.

With a well-stocked woodshop downstairs and an art shop upstairs, Shuler took up porcelain doll making. Poured from the slip into molds, she fired the components in three different sized kilns. Cleaned and refired the painted porcelain, strung or sewed cotton stuffed muslin bodies, and designed and made the clothing for the authenticity of the reproduction dolls.

Accepting the offered job of a substitute mail carrier, she bought a dodge truck and had the bucket seats swapped out for a bench seat to accommodate the need for her to sit on the passenger side while driving with her left hand and foot. The country mail route encompassed 116 miles and about as many mailboxes. For 11 years she was called to drive often enough for the weight and arm motion of mail delivery that her shoulders were torn so badly as to require surgery. With her mother living with her, she was forced to place her mother in Springfield Place until she recuperated from shoulder surgery. Her mother died the month she was to be brought back home. That was November 2000. Her mother was 98.

Needing another outlet for her desire to do something, Priscilla began jewelry making. This was a very satisfying endeavor, and she made and gave jewelry to many friends and family members... That is until she began writing in 2008. At the age of 75, she grasped the desire by the heart and horns and didn‘t look back

Thus far 6 full-length novels have been written with two more simmering in her trusty Dell computer, plus the beginnings of her memoir.

It is with the greatest sincerity that Priscilla hopes you, Beloved reader, will enjoy her literary offerings. Hopefully, there‘s a genre that will call to your reading heart. Who is to dictate? Try them all.