Authors for Literacy, Turning Pages SC, and numerous community partners in Lexington and Richland County of South Carolina come together annually to raise money for adult literacy. Join us as we highlight the incredible talent of authors supporting this event. To book your table space or sponsor the event, head over to Authors for Literacy.
Kathy Gantt Widener was born in Lexington County, SC, in the small town of Batesburg. One month after graduating from high school, she married the love of her life and would spend the next seventeen years raising their three children.
At age nineteen she first developed a love for history and an obsession for genealogy. She spent endless hours in cemeteries, archives, courthouses, and interviewing older family members. But, that passion was placed on hold as she raised a family. Eighteen years later she decided to attend college part time. In 1990 she received an Associate Degree with high honors. That major? History.
Kathy and her siblings had gown up in the same old house built by her granddaddy, Kelly Gantt, and his brothers in 1912. Kathy and her siblings would listen to their Uncle Leon’s endless stories about his youth, making moonshine and his service in WWII. Uncle Leon had a phenomenal memory and loved to share his stories. He kept Kathy and her siblings mesmerized for hours with his tales.
After his death in 2002 at age 91, Kathy decided that Uncle Leon’s stories deserved to be shared. That’s when she began to weave them into a narrative based on true events and real characters. Read them all in books by Kathy such as Where Memories Live.
