In Memorium    
J Hal Jameson, MD   
John Hal Jameson, Sr., MD
1917 - 2011   

John Hal Jameson, Sr., MD, who died on March 16, 2011, was the descendant of several founding pioneer families from what is today Pickens, Greenville, and Anderson Counties. He is buried at West View Cemetery in Easley. He was born in Easley, SC on May 17, 1917, the son of Nettie Ellison Jameson and Leo Lake Jameson, MD.  Growing up during the Great Depression, he lived nearly his entire life in his home at 206 North B Street in Easley. He was well known in his church community, being a lifelong, and the oldest, member of Easley’s First United Methodist Church, where he has served both as a steward and as a member of the Finance Committee. He was a graduate of Easley High School, Clemson College, the Medical College of South Carolina, and performed a one year Internship at Greenville General Hospital.

At the onset of World War II, he was a commissioned medical officer and rose to the rank of  Major in the U.S. Army Medical Corp (Surgeon's Office, Sixth Army). He served in Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines in the Southwest Pacific Theater.

At the conclusion of the war, he returned to Easley where he set up a medical practice in Family Medicine that lasted 40 years. During this time, before a hospital was established in Easley, he delivered approximately 2,500 babies in the community. He performed distinguished service to his profession, his community, and state. Among his accomplishments were: founded, along with Dr. J. A. (Tony) White, the Easley Medical Center;  founding trustee of what became Easley Baptist Hospital, known today as Palmetto Health Baptist Easley Hospital; Past President of Pickens County Medical Society; member of the South Carolina Medical Association, serving for 12 years on the association’s Council; was on the original Board of Visitors for the Medical University of South Carolina; and served on the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Board of Directors for more than twenty years and was President of South Carolina Blue Shield from 1965 to 1971. He was also active in his community as President of the Easley Lions Club, and served on the Board of Directors of Carolina National Bank for more than twenty-five years.

With a life-long love affair with Jocassee Valley, he was one of Mr. Julian A. Wyatt’s boys during his high school and college days. He later had a home he called Riverview between the White Water and Thompson Rivers where they came together, and later had a home on Lake Keowee after the Duke Power lakes were constructed.

During 2002 and 2003,  he was a founding member of the Jameson Family Cemetery, Inc. preservation association, where he contributed significant  moral and financial support as well as details of Jameson family history that he had collected over the years. The work of the association has followed in the footsteps of the Jameson Cemetery Trust that his father, Leo Lake Jameson, MD, had co-founded in 1913.

Appreciative of history as well as the arts, he served more than twenty years on, and was past Chairman of, the Pickens County Cultural Commission, where he was active in the growth, development, and 2006-2007 expansion of the Pickens County Museum of Art & History, and was a key long-time player in the preservation, restoration, and presentation of the Hagood Mill Historic Site and Folklife Center in Pickens, S.C. 

He received the Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian award of the State of South Carolina, in May 2010.
He is survived by his children, Charlotte J. Watson, John H. Jameson, Jr., Williams M. Jameson, 10 grandchildren, and 7 great grandchildren. He was predeceased by son Robert Lake (Bobby) Jameson, a brother, Lake Hugh Jameson, a sister, Martha Jameson Carson, and wife, Sue McCall Jameson.