Jacqueline Duke Pardue CHARLESTON - An angel died just after sunrise Sunday, Nov. 27. Shirley Jacqueline Duke Pardue was a living angel and now she is with the heavenly ones she emulated her entire life - well at least after her precocious childhood, mostly in Birmingham, Alabama where she and her nine sisters and brothers spent much of their free time playing practical jokes on each other. But to hear her tell it, Jackie, as she was called, didn't have a lot of free time because her mother tasked her with most of the cooking, washing, caring for younger siblings and carrying water from the well. Jackie, the third oldest of 10 children, was a tomboy who liked nothing better than to team up with her younger brother Bob and scheme ways to get a rise out of their older brother, Bill. One notorious example of this occurred when the family briefly lived in Tampa. Jackie and Bob found a small alligator, carried it home and slipped it in the bathtub where Bill was about to take a shower. What happened next is the subject of various family stories none of which may be true. Suffice it to say that Bill survived unharmed. Jackie was born on August 15, 1915, a year after the beginning of World War I, and lived to celebrate her 101st birthday touching the lives of many in many parts of the world with her kindness, generosity and love. In addition to raising her two sons, she helped raise a niece, Debbie Carter McNeil and two nephews, Tom and Rick Carter after their parents' death in an airplane crash. She was the daughter of William Madison Duke and Frankie Mae Calhoun Duke and grew up telling everyone that she was the daughter of a duke and a relative of both Robert E Lee and John C. Calhoun. In the South in those days that was important linage, even if not true. In her 101 years Jackie witnessed many miraculous and frightening events: WW I, the Great Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, WW II, the atomic bombs, jet airliners, the space race, the Moon landing, the Cold War, the fall of the Iron Curtain and a black man, for whom she voted, elected President of the United States. She almost got to see a woman elected president. She had a front row seat for much of that as the wife of a career Army officer, Norman C. Pardue, who she married on June 30, 1942 just months after the United States entered World War II. The couple would have two sons, Norman Jr. and Douglas. Jackie was an early feminist in many ways, though not one who made the news. Her parents paid for their sons to attend college but not daughters, so Jackie set up shop as a hairdresser in her college dorm at Samford University to pay her own way. Later, she left home, despite her father's wishes, for Washington, DC to be near the man she would marry. She started her own business, a beauty shop in Shirlington just outside DC and for years earned substantially more money than her military husband. She sold the business to move with her family to Germany where Norman served in the post-war occupation. After returning stateside from that tour of duty, the family moved to several cities as the Army promoted Norman to higher ranks and Jackie settled into life as a commanding officer's wife. Norman took command of the St. Louis Ordinance District which was given the task of developing America's first space satellite, and Jackie hosted receptions for many of the scientists engaged in winning the space race. After that tour of duty, Norman was promoted to colonel, sent for a year of study at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., and then was assigned to a joint military command in Asia. The family moved to Taipei, Taiwan where Nationalist China and what was then called Red China still engaged in cannon fire, lobbing propaganda shells between the islands of Quemoy and Matsu and the mainland. After returning from Taiwan, Norman took a couple of stateside posts before being sent to Vietnam. It was the only assignment Jackie didn't accompany him on since WW II. By then, Norman had early stages of the Parkinson's disease that ultimately would force him into retirement and turn Jackie into a full-time nurse, caring for him at home for 10 years until his death in 1979. For a while after that Jackie struggled with loneliness but her gregarious nature and lifelong love of cards, especially bridge, soon won her a wide circle of friends who liked nothing better than to go on ocean cruises where they played cards and drank Champaign. Jackie also found love again in the form of a gentle man who didn't play bridge but was a card sharp at pinochle, a perfect game for two that they played often as they traveled together for seven years until his sudden death. With the love and support of her card playing friends, Jackie lived on her own in Manassas, Va. and continued to drive a car in the congested Washington suburbs traffic until she turned 95 and moved in with her son, Doug and his wife Judy in Charleston, SC where she died peacefully in her sleep. Almost to the end, she retained her joy of playing pranks. One of those hangs on a wall at Doug's home. It's the giant tooth of a prehistoric shark. She bought the tooth at an Edisto Island store and hid it until she and Doug went to search for the small, black prehistoric shark's teeth that waves wash-up on Edisto's beach. Most of those teeth are just an inch or so long. While Doug searched one part of the beach for the small teeth, Jackie dropped her hidden monster to the sand and waited for him to wander back near her and find it. He excitedly announced his discovery to all of those nearby. Soon, dozens of beachgoers circled for a view of the giant find and a throng began scouring the beach for more. Jackie grinned as she walked the beach, head down, as if looking for another shark's tooth. She is survived by her son Doug and his wife Judy; a daughter-in-law, Lou Ann Steen Pardue Devers (Malcolm); a sister, Jean Harris; seven grandchildren, Kristina Pardue, Anya Pardue Townsend (Paul), Jessica Bonilla, Britney Pardue (Greg Keneitz), Tiffany Pardue (Felipe Silva Marambio), Beth Dillehay Medina (Ron) and Melissa Dillehay Hahn (Cory); 15 great grandchildren and a host of much-loved nieces and nephews. Jackie was preceded in death by eight siblings; her son, Norman C. Pardue, Jr. and two grandchildren, Amanda and Cordrey Pardue. Memorial Services will be held Saturday, December 10, 2016 in the J. Henry Stuhr Downtown Chapel, 232 Calhoun Street at 3:00 pm. The family will receive friends one hour prior to the service in the Downtown Chapel. In lieu of flowers memorials may be made to Emanuel AME Church, 1057 5th Ave., Charleston, SC 29407 or Lutheran Hospice, 1885 Rifle Range Rd. Suite 46, Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464 A memorial message may be sent to the family by visiting Stuhr's website at www.jhenrystuhr.com. Visit our guestbook at www.legacy.com/obituaries/ charleston