Doris Sites Kleckley

Doris (Dot) Sites Kleckley, 96, of Irmo, South Carolina died on February 19, 2026. She was born on April 19, 1929, at the family home on what is now Kennerly Road in Irmo. She was the youngest of nine children born to J. Sidney and Claudia Amick Sites.

She graduated from Chapin High School and, in 1949, from the Columbia Hospital School of Nursing and began a career in private practice. That same year she married Heyward Keenan Kleckley of West Columbia.

She spent much of her adult life balancing responsibilities of work and family with the eventual arrival of four boys. In 1966, she joined her husband in the family-run automotive parts and accessories distributorship that they managed for over fifteen years before retiring. In 1996, she and her husband built a new home on the same site where she was born and that became the center of family life for the next three decades.

An active Lutheran throughout her life, Doris was a member of several Lutheran churches in the Dutch Fork of South Carolina and in Charlotte, North Carolina where the family lived for a brief time. She was an avid worker of crossword puzzles, a formidable competitor at Scrabble, and enjoyed crocheting. Especially in her retirement years, she and her husband enjoyed traveling around the region and country, most of all with friends in their motor home. Yet home and family remained the focus of her life. She will be remembered by all who knew her for her warm and gentle spirit, her willingness to lend a hand wherever it was needed, an often surprising sense of humor that became increasingly evident as she got older, and the stories she told about growing up on the farm and work in the cotton field.

She was predeceased by her husband of seventy-five years, her son Philip, and daughter-in-law Regina (Stephen), along with her eight siblings Ellis (Meetze), Edward, Ethel (Derrick), Mildred, Herbert, Lois (Hull), Mary Ruth (Shealy), and Cecil (Fermanis). She is survived by sons Stephen H. Kleckley, Russell C. Kleckley (Julianne), and Jeffrey B. Kleckley; granddaughter, Elizabeth Kleckley and her mother, Margaret Gifford Kleckley, daughter-in-law Toni Lewis Kleckley (Philip), and numerous nieces and nephews.

A graveside service will be held at 2:00 pm on Sunday, February 22, 2026, at the Mt. Horeb Lutheran Church cemetery in Chapin, South Carolina on Columbia Ave. near the church. Visitation will follow the service at 2:45 in the church fellowship hall at 101 E Boundary St., Chapin, SC 29036.

In lieu of flowers memorials may be sent to Mt. Horeb Lutheran Church or to Newberry College for the J. Sidney and Claudia Amick Sites Scholarship, addressed to Newberry College, Office of Institutional Advancement, 2100 College St., Newberry, SC 29108.

The family extends its deep gratitude to the staffs at the Rehabilitation and Health Care Center of The Heritage at Lowman and at Lutheran Hospice for their kind and faithful care to Doris during her last days.