Thomas G. Hiers

Thomas Gary Hiers of Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina (SC) died on April 10, 2026. Thom was a native of Florence, SC, born on May 19, 1942 to Robert Gary Hiers, Jr. and Lonnell Johnson Hiers. His father worked for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, and his mother taught in the Florence County school system.

Often, someone destined to have a significant impact on many lives begins humbly. Thom and his family lived quietly in Florence, where he attended local schools, worshipped at his family’s Methodist church, and participated in community life just as his neighbors did.

Yet what few people knew were Thom’s many quiet projects. A good example is his caretaking of a young, terminally ill friend, whom he randomly met when accompanying his father to a doctor’s visit. Without telling anyone in his family, Thom took it upon himself to visit this young man every day – including weekends – in the hospital. This went on for months as the young man’s health withered. One day when Thom arrived for his daily visit, he found his friend to have just died. At that same moment, he looked out the hospital window and recognized the family walking up the path below – parents who believed they were coming to see their living child. Thom rushed out, diverted them with a plausible story about a treatment being prepared, and asked them to wait. This gave him time to alert the hospital staff, locate the boy’s doctor, and ensure the room was ready before the family entered. Thom was fourteen years old.

Thom graduated from McClenaghan High School in 1960 and earned a BA from the University of South Carolina in 1964. By twenty-two, he was in Recife, Brazil, running the Peace Corps’ effort to build a healthy community in one of the country’s most impoverished regions. Having mastered Portuguese, Thom arrived in a place devastated by structural poverty and managed a network of fellow volunteers delivering education, sanitation, and healthcare. He served two years, from 1964 to 1966, made lasting friendships in Recife, and returned to visit many times over the course of his life.

Though his impact on the people of Recife was profound, it was not the kind that made headlines. Yet, word traveled in the world of international aid. In 1967, Thom received a call from a leader at the National Council of Churches, asking whether he would help the starving people of Biafra, a breakaway region of Nigeria embroiled in a bitter civil war. Thom’s Portuguese and his experience in Recife made him the natural choice. He agreed to go.

What followed was one of the great humanitarian operations of the twentieth century – ultimately more than 5,000 food airlift flights staged from São Tomé Island (off the coast of Central Africa) into the besieged region. Thom ran the ground operation. The politics were treacherous, the power games opaque, and the consequences of failure beyond reckoning. What astonished those who worked alongside Thom was that he kept his head in that impossible tangle of complexity. He could find the critical path through almost any problem that arose, and he had a rare gift for mollifying those who didn’t get their way without losing their respect. Everyone, it was noted, listened to his direction and followed it.

Had a balcony not collapsed beneath him and thrown him into traffic below – where a passing truck crushed his ankle – it is likely he would have stayed in São Tomé much longer. Instead, he returned to Florence to heal. The injury pained him for the rest of his life. After recovering, he enrolled in the MA/PhD program in psychology at the University of South Carolina, where he earned his PhD (1975). Following a clinical internship at Denver University (Colorado), and a brief marriage to Anna Lynn Benson, he began his career in mental health in South Carolina – first at the SC State Mental Hospital, then as Director of the child and adolescent division of the Charleston Mental Health Center, and ultimately as Executive Director of the Charleston Dorchester Mental Health Center, the public system serving adults and children across schools, group homes, jails, homeless shelters, and nursing homes throughout the region. In 1987, he started Mobile Crisis in Charleston – the first 24/7/365 community, emergency mental health assessment program in South Carolina. This program is now in all 46 counties in the state. He started the first 24/7/365 crisis stabilization unit for adults in 1999 and the first Mental Health Court in South Carolina in 2003. Colleagues and co-workers shared that he had a vision for expanding mental health care and access and always put patients’ needs first. Thom also held a position as Clinical Associate Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and taught at The Citadel, the College of Charleston, the University of South Carolina, and Denver University. He appeared before the SC Legislature on multiple occasions and served as an expert witness in consequential court cases. In his discretionary time, he served on boards addressing child abuse, foster care, and Medicaid access. He also served on and chaired the Sullivan’s Island Board of Zoning Appeals for many years.

The throughline of Thom’s life, however, was not his directorships or his public service. The throughline runs straight back to the fourteen-year-old boy in the hospital corridor, buying time for a grieving family. Thom loved people and was determined to help – quietly, without ceremony, and often anonymously.

In one instance, he placed an ad in a local newspaper that read simply: “Does anyone need help with money?” Respondents were asked to write to a P.O. box number and make their case. A young person, very down on their luck, saw the ad, found it deeply suspicious – and decided to apply anyway. Thom received many responses. He chose this one. He went to the shop where the applicant worked, asked for them by name, and was told they had just stepped out on a break. Thom went to the street, called out the name, and handed the person an unmarked envelope containing $800. He then walked back into the shop and was gone, leaving a stunned young person on the sidewalk trying to make sense of what had just happened. Over the years that followed, Thom maintained a quiet, behaviorally grounded relationship with that person – rewarding growth, affirming worth. Today that person is married, runs a thriving business, and has a child.

Thom would often say, “Aren’t I the luckiest man on earth?” That was genuinely what he saw – the love surrounding him, everywhere he looked. Nothing pleased him more than being with his family and friends, making fig preserves, teaching others to talk straight, and showing the people in his life that they were seen, heard, and loved.

He is survived by his son, Gary Thomas Hiers of Mount Pleasant, SC, whom Thom adopted at age fourteen from a foster care program with which he was professionally affiliated, in a gesture entirely consistent with how he lived; his nephews John Madison Rainwater (Kelly) of Charleston, SC and Thomas Robert Rainwater (Katie) of Mt. Pleasant, SC; two great nephews, John Hiers Rainwater (Rebecca) of Charlotte, NC and Talon James Rainwater of Mt. Pleasant, SC; two great nieces, Turner Lynn Rainwater Byers (Grant) of Charleston, SC and Price Madison Rainwater of Baltimore, MD; and one great-great niece, James Lois Byers of Charleston, SC.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Robert Gary Hiers, Jr. and Lonnell Johnson Hiers, and by his sister, Anna Rose Hiers Rainwater.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial gifts be directed to Mental Health HEROES (https://www.mhheroes.com).

To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.