Maxine Hendrickson Dexter

Maxine Hendrickson Dexter of Aiken, S.C. died peacefully in her home, surrounded by her loving family, on Saturday, January 3. She was born on March 1, 1928 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Maxine was the daughter of John and Mildred Mooney Hendrickson and lived a happy childhood with her sister, June, in South Texas. She married the love of her life, Arthur (Art) Harlan Dexter, during the war years, and during the 1950s they became parents to five children.

Maxine was the heart and soul of a large, extended family, and she met life’s challenges and adversities with wisdom, strength, and a cheerful heart. She exposed her children to a range of interests — pottery, gardening, antiquing, poetry, literature, medicine, music, the arts, and exploring the local countryside. She instilled humanitarian values and a love of nature. She was a Cub Scout den mother and ace driver on the family’s large paper routes. She supported her children’s menagerie of pigeons, ducks, rabbits and other pets. She sewed custom paisley vests for her son’s early-1960s rock-and-roll band. Maxine’s passion was loom weaving, but she also enjoyed quilt-making, macrame, and creating appliqué banners for church sanctuaries. She sewed custom curtains and bedding for the houseboat that Art built for family weekends on the lake. During the summer of 1965, she and Art took their five children on a month-long odyssey across the country to camp in National Parks throughout the American West.

Maxine worked as a surgical nurse at the Aiken County Hospital, and Art worked as a nuclear physicist with the Savannah River Plant. Going into their retirement years, she and Art — or “Dex” as she called him — began living a different sort of life guided by the tenet of “living simply so that others may simply live.” In 1976, they built a simple house in the country and cultivated a large garden, whose harvests were canned, preserved, and widely shared. For decades, Maxine and Art filled their days working with numerous causes: tutoring adults in literacy and reading; delivering Meals on Wheels; volunteering with ACTS, (Area Churches Together Serving); leading Prayers for Peace meetings every Friday evening at Virginia Acres Park. They sponsored six children from around the world, developing lifelong bonds. Each Thanksgiving, Maxine worked for the Franciscan Center on Saint Helena Island delivering food packages to “the least of these.” Often, it was Maxine’s quiet work, behind the scenes at home, that enabled Art to pursue even more efforts dear to their hearts, including his work with the Salkehatchie Summer Service at Penn Center on St. Helena Island — a youth-driven ministry that rebuilds and repairs homes for those in need.

After Art died in 2004, Maxine continued her work with ACTS and with various ministries at St. John’s Methodist Church, where she and Art were members. She continued planting and harvesting their large vegetable garden. She transformed their property into a lovely park-like setting with native wildlife habitat and a landscape that, to borrow from Emerson, laughs in flowers every spring. Maxine loved life and never tired of learning new things. At the age of 90, she read “War and Peace” and won four 1st place ribbons in the Aiken Camellia Show. At the age of 94, she was still penning letters to the editor, and at age, 97, she was still keeping up with current events, still mailing handwritten notes to her friends and family, and still finding ways to say “I love you” to the people in her life.

In addition to Art, Maxine was preceded in death by her parents; her sister, June Hendrickson Craigie; her son, Gary Philip Dexter; and her granddaughter, Kathryn Dowling Dexter. Maxine is survived by one daughter, Laura Dexter Lance, and three sons, David Allan Dexter (Silvia Drews), John Paul Dexter (Faye Dowling), Jeffrey Lee Dexter, and two adopted children, Monta Phetsena Diaz (Luis Diaz) and Michael Aiken. She is also survived by four granddaughters: Wren Dexter Padgett (Charles Padgett), Hannah Jane Dexter (Roxanne Babb), Glynnis Christine Dexter (Zach Moore), and three grandsons, Eric Dexter Lance, Travis Diaz, and Shane Varnadore. Maxine was blessed with 5 great-grandchildren: Clara Rose Padgett, Maxine Eleanor Padgett, Lila Dexter-Moore, and Ian Dexter Matthews. She is also survived by a host of nephews, her beloved niece, Jody Ridky, her sister-in-law, Mary Lou Dexter Harrold, her dear friend Margo Love, and her “other daughter” Jill Pellarin. Maxine’s dachshund, Sam, remained her constant and watchful companion to the very end.

A private family celebration of Maxine’s life will be held at a later date, with interment at Ramsey Creek Preserve in Westminster, SC. Memorials may be made to Meals on Wheels America at https://www.mealsonwheelsamerica.org/donate/ or via check mailed to Salkehatchie Summer Service, 4908 Colonial Drive, Columbia, SC 29203.

SHELLHOUSE-RIVERS FUNERAL HOME, 715 EAST PINE LOG RD., AIKEN, SC