Elouise Guggenheim

Ina Elouise Hays Guggenheim, 97, Who Found Joy in Family, Craft, and the Everyday

Elouise Hays Guggenheim, whose life stretched from Depression-era Alabama to a long retirement in the North Carolina mountains, died Sunday morning, September 28, 2025, in the arms of family and friends. She was 97.

Born August 13, 1928, in Sibleyville, Ala., a brickyard village that no longer exists, she was the youngest of three children of William Monroe Hays, a barber, and his wife, a true homemaker, Ellie Lenora. Raised in nearby Warrior, Elouise adored her “shoeshine boy” brother Perry, and her big “bossy” sister Marjorie. At 15, she was a substitute teacher in a rural one-room school. She worked weekends at Warrior Mercantile, where she used her first earnings to buy a pair of saddle oxford shoes. In 1945, at the age of 16, Elouise graduated from Warrior High School—valedictorian. At 17, she passed the civil service exam and went to work for the Social Security Administration in Birmingham.

There she met Gus Guggenheim, a returning World War II veteran who came in to apply for a Social Security card. Love at first sight. They married in 1948 on the porch of the Methodist Church parsonage in Warrior, beginning a union of 71 years.

They began their life in a cramped trailer near Auburn University with a puppy, the first of many dogs and cats they would own. She especially loved Skippy, Rocky, and Mama Cat. After a miscarriage, she feared she would not have children. But then, in 1950, she gave birth to the first of three “miracle” sons. She was a Cub Scout den mother for five years and nurtured a lifelong love of reading, painting, sewing, and flower-gardening—and cheering for the Auburn Tigers.

The couple lived throughout the South before retiring to Saluda, N.C. They made and sold their arts and crafts at mountain festivals. Family was the heart of Elouise’s life and the source of her greatest joy.

She is survived by her sons Alan, David and Gary; grandchildren Jeffrey, Jonathan, Adam, Beth and Gretchen, and eight great-grandchildren Scarlett, Sadie and Jack Guggenheim, Ella and Ava Buckner, and Oliver, Arlo and Bronwyn Bache. Gus died in 2019.

A graveside service will be held at one o’clock on Thursday, October 2, 2025 at Saluda City Cemetery.