A
t age 85, Mary Ann Cannady still gets up at 5:30 a.m. and goes to work all day at her insurance company, The Cannady Agency. She started selling insurance door-todoor in the 1960s. She’s also still active in politics in the local and state Republican party.
At 85, Cannady is still working & loving it A
t 85, Mary Ann Cannady and her yellow legal pad still go to work every day. Although she wasn’t born in Walterboro, she has been a fixture in the town’s business, community and politics for nearly 60 years. And she built her insurance agency, The Cannady Agency, in the 1960s and 70s when most women were baking cookies. She grew up all over the U.S., from Florida to Kansas, as her father 10
moved with his job. In 1956 she got the opportunity to come to Walterboro to be a supervisor with Standard Coffee Company. She spent two years here, making friends and a “few dollars,” before moving back to Virginia to be with her family. Another job offer brought her back shortly after, and this time she decided to make Walterboro home and bought a house. She got married in 1959 in Bethel U.M. Church. Her parents retired here the following year. About 1963, she was running the office supply store and reading proofs at The Press and Standard when she got the chance to get into the insurance industry. Then publisher of The Press, Wightman Smoak, told her she’d “never make it in the insurance business,” she laughed. “I think about that often. We had conversations about that and other things over the years, but we were always friends.” She said, “I did it for money. I was making $45-$60 a week, and this was going to pay me $95 a week.” By then, she was divorced with a Lowcountry Rocks 2020
