Last Updated on November 12, 2024 2:23 pm
The Watauga County Historical Society (WCHS) continues to expand its roster of Hall of Fame inductees for the year 2024, building on an initiative started in 2022 as part of Boone’s 150th celebrations. WCHS is delighted to announce that Agnes Morgan “Jete” Jeter (1908-2005) has been selected as one of this year’s inductees.
Born on February 22, 1908, in the ancestral family home known as Flint Hill Plantation at Goshen Hill (sometimes referred to as the “Rice-Coleman-Jeter House”) near Union, South Carolina, Agnes Jeter was the daughter of Dr. Robert Russell Jeter and Agnes Morgan Coleman Jeter. She had three brothers and two sisters and was the fourth of the six children. “Jete,” as she was affectionately known for much of her life, grew up in Union, graduating from Union High School as an accomplished athlete. Jete then earned her bachelor’s degree at Winthrop College (now University) in Rock Hill, SC, where she was a standout athlete in field hockey, tennis, archery, track, bowling, and basketball, as well as captain of the varsity women’s basketball team in three of her four years. She graduated in 1929. Shortly thereafter, she completed a master’s degree at Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, then taught briefly in a Wilmington, NC, elementary school before serving for many years as faculty in the Department of Physical Education at Greensboro College and as a swim coach and head of physical education at the Out-of-Door School in Sarasota, Florida.
While in attendance at Winthrop, Jeter signed on to spend a summer as a college student counselor at Camp Yonahlossee in the Blowing Rock vicinity in 1927. The camp for young women, which had been founded in 1922 by Dr. Adam Perry Kephart and his wife Margaret (known affectionately as “Kep” and “Keppie”), two popular educators from Greensboro, soon became a perennial and lifelong summer commitment for Jete in the six decades that followed. After serving for many years as a counselor, then head counselor at Yonahlossee by the mid-1940s, Jeter was regarded as a critical player in camp operations. In partnership with George and Jean McCord, Jeter purchased the camp in 1954, where she continued to serve as one of its directors until she sold the camp in 1980 to James and Elaine Jones, then retired from counseling in 1981, when the steepness of local trails proved too much for her aging body. In those final years, Jeter often stayed in an apartment in Boone instead of overnight at the camp, yet kept on agreeing to stay for “one more year.” To document the impact of her career on Camp Yonahlossee, a building known as “Jete’s Retreat” was built in 1981 and filled with her large photo collection of the campers who has passed through Yonahlossee over the years.
Camp Yonahlossee focused on outdoor recreation and served as a counterpart to Camp Yonahnoka, a boys’ camp located in Linville. Activities at the girls’ camp included canoeing, horseback riding, swimming, sailing, crafts, weaving, dance, theatre, music, fencing, archery, and rifle shooting. The friendships formed at Camp Yonahlossee often lasted a lifetime, and Jeter was seen as the essential influence to the building of those relationships among the campers she referred to as “my girls.” Perceived as the “heart and soul” of the camp, but also known as a stern disciplinarian, Jeter was renowned for teaching her students the importance of friendship, good character, and loyalty. As Vicki Steadman Clement, a 1940s camper, recalled in 1983, “You simply did not disobey Jete, but she always [won our obedience] in a loving way…. Jete had more influence on my life—other than my parents and church—than anyone. Ask anybody [who camped with Jete], they’ll tell you the same thing.” Margaret Barnes, who spent five summers at the camp as a child, echoed the sentiment in 1980, when she returned to Camp Yonahlossee to visit Jeter: “We all come back because of Jete. She meant more to us than almost anyone in our lifetime.” As Jane Welch, a reporter for the News and Observer, wrote in 1980 about Jeter, “She knows how to make homesickness go away. For the lonely girl, she offers friendship. For the spoiled girl, she offers a chance to mature.” Remembering Jeter in 2005, Tori Clement Garrett summed up the profound impact Jete had on so many lives: “My Camp Yonahlossee experience molded me, but Jete guided me. I was awed by her. I know I wouldn’t be who I am today without my Yonahlossee days.”
During her career, Jeter also served in various professional capacities, including as the recording secretary for the Southeastern Section of the American Camping Association in the mid-1950s. Following her retirement from Camp Yonahlossee in 1981 after 55 years of service to the camp, Jeter returned to her home in Union, South Carolina. She was admitted into the athletic Halls of Fame at both Union High School and Winthrop University and received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Winthrop. In her retirement, she was also a committed member of the Grace Methodist Church and a volunteer with Meals on Wheels. Jeter passed away on June 11, 2005, in Union, SC, at the age of 97.
Over the past three years, the WCHS has considered numerous nominations from the public for its Hall of Fame, but Agnes Jeter stands out as the only inductee to be nominated on multiple occasions by different parties—an apparent testament to the depth and breadth of her influence on those who camped with her at Camp Yonahlossee. Because of her prodigious influence on the lives of so many young women who passed through Camp Yonahlossee over her 55-year tenure, we are delighted to honor her with a well-deserved spot in WCHS’s Hall of Fame for 2024.
The WCHS Hall of Fame honors individuals, either living or dead, who have made significant and lasting contributions to Watauga County’s history and/or literature, including those whose efforts have been essential to the preservation of Watauga County’s history and/or literature. Honorees need not have been residents of Watauga County. The WCHS is particularly interested in honoring individuals who meet the above criteria but who may have been overlooked in traditional accounts of Watauga County’s history and literature, including women and people of color. Selections for this class were made from nominations submitted by members of the Digital Watauga Project Committee (DWPC) of WCHS as well as the public.
