Hilda man Blease Stanley remembered ahead of Thursday graveside service

Blease Murray Stanley’s life was rooted in Hilda, Hampton and the surrounding Lowcountry, with work at SRS, years on the road as a long-distance driver and time laboring at Brubaker Dairy Farm. He died Saturday, May 30, at 74, and the obituary posted Monday, June 1, marked his passing as a loss felt across the family network that still surrounds him.

The graveside funeral service was held Thursday, June 4, at Sandy Run Cemetery in Hampton, with the Reverend Timmy Gunnells officiating. Family members received friends Wednesday evening, June 3, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Folk Funeral Home in Williston, giving neighbors and relatives a chance to pay respects before the burial. Those details mattered for Hilda and nearby communities because they set out exactly where and when people could come together for the final service.

Stanley was born in Hampton, the son of the late Colet Blease Stanley and Geneva Long Stanley. The notice described him as a Christian and said fishing was among the things he enjoyed most, a simple detail that reflected the quieter parts of his life beyond work. He retired after becoming disabled from medical issues, closing a working life that stretched from industrial jobs to farm labor and long-haul driving.

The family left behind includes grandchildren, great-grandchildren and a brother, showing a household that remained connected across several generations in the region. The obituary also named his sisters, Lynn Rose Stanley and Jeanette Stanley, and his grandson Noah Stanley, who had died before him. Those losses framed Stanley’s passing as one that touched more than one branch of the family at once.

For Hilda families who knew the Stanleys through church, work or kinship, the obituary served as both a public notice and a local record of a life lived close to home. It gave the practical details people needed for visitation and burial, while also preserving the family links that made Blease Murray Stanley’s death a community matter, not just a private one.