Calvin ‘Chip’ Jackson remembered for impact on family, community at ‘homegoing’
Darrell Jackson felt blindsided by the death of his cousin Chip.
At a “homegoing” service for Calvin “Chip” Jackson at Bible Way Church on Thursday, the church’s senior pastor recalled staying on the phone with Chip’s wife, Pat, as the ambulance rushed to their home last Friday, when the county councilman suddenly went “into distress,” Jackson said.
Darrell Jackson prayed on that phone call that one of his deacons, someone he had grown up with and considered as close as a brother, would be OK.
“I said, ‘Why, Lord? You can’t do this,’” Jackson remembered. “But God said, ‘I love you, but I don’t owe you an explanation.’”
Chip Jackson, a longtime community leader in his Richland County church, district schools and elected office, died unexpectedly on Friday. He left behind his wife, his mother, children and grandchildren, and a wider family who grieved his sudden absence from their lives.
Jackson had served on the Richland 2 school board for eight years before he was elected to Richland County Council in 2016. Jackson chaired the transportation committee that oversaw the county’s $1 billion road improvement program.
From that perch, he helped craft a plan that erased a projected $154 million deficit and instead leaves the road program with a $56.5 million surplus. Richland County Council approved that plan earlier this year.
Council Chairman Paul Livingston, finding the task of eulogizing Jackson “five times more difficult than I thought it would be,” thanked Jackson’s family for sharing him with the community.
“He will leave a huge empty space on our council,” Livingston said. “The path he left behind will be hard to follow.”
Baron Davis, superintendent of Richland 2 schools, said he saw Jackson as “the example of a servant-leader.”
“We had breakfast together four or five times during the school year, and we prayed over the community we served and love,” Davis said. “There was no agenda, just a wise man serving up wisdom to an eager understudy.”
Before his time on the school board, Jackson had worked at the University of South Carolina, Clemson University, College of Charleston and Trident Technical College, as well as serving as a deputy superintendent in the S.C. Department of Education.
At Bible Way, Jackson was just as involved, chairing the deacons’ ministry and serving as vice chairman of the board of trustees.
Fellow deacon Marlon Walters said he was rocked by Jackson’s passing, “but then I realized I was being selfish.”
“As believers, we are taught to live for the moment my brother experienced last Friday,” Walters said. “I was getting into my feelings, as the kids say, but then the Holy Spirit convicted me. It said, ‘Who are you to try to stand between me and my child?’”
Jackson’s brother, Kenyatta Jackson, spoke to his nephew Regis Jackson ahead of the service.
“He was having a tough time, but he said he didn’t feel like he missed anything,” Kenyatta Jackson said. “He said, ‘Everything my daddy wanted to download into me, I got it.’”
Kenyatta Jackson, 13 years his brother’s junior, told his nephew he had a similar experience. “When I talked to him, I didn’t feel like I was talking to a brother. It felt like I was talking to my father.”
By contrast, Darrell Jackson said his cousin felt more like a brother to him. The two were so close growing up that for a while their two families lived in the same house.
“I learned to drive with Chip in the car,” Darrell Jackson said. “I learned to hunt with Chip. I learned to fish with Chip. I learned how to be a man with Chip.”
Despite his sadness, Darrell Jackson preached his assurance Thursday that his cousin had “transitioned” to a better place.
“God has taught me to embrace pain,” he said. “If a relationship causes you pain, that just shows you how special it was.”
Jackson’s daughter Cass Smith shared that faith. She recalled the research her father would do for their family vacations, making sure anywhere they visited would be “daddy-approved.”
When her father died, “I felt like you had left me,” Smith said, “but then I realized you just had to go somewhere ahead of us, to check it out so it’s daddy-approved.”
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