FAIRHOPE &8212; Agnes Loraine &8220;Lo&8221; Harper died on March 15, 2008, in Fairhope. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m., on Friday, March 28, 2008, at the chapel of Wolfe-Bayview Funeral Home in Fairhope. The family will receive friends from 1 p.m. until time of service. Wolfe-Bayview Funeral Home in Fairhope is in charge of the arrangements.

She was born in Gurnee Junction in Shelby County, on Oct. 18, 1912. Harper was the third of six children to Richard and Mamie Jones Harper. Her father being an agent with the Southern Railroad, her family lived in several locations in what was then a rural Shelby County during World War I, after which her father was transferred to Demopolis, where she was educated in the Demopolis public schools. After graduating from high school, she returned to her native Shelby County to attend Alabama College for Women, now the University of Montevallo, but other priorities, not the least of which being the Great Depression, led her to abandon her pursuit of higher education for other various callings over the years.

Harper had a variety of occupations for the next 20 years, among them working for the American Red Cross in post-WWII Germany, and as an office clerk for a lumber company in Butler. Her love of sewing, however, a talent which she developed as a child mending and altering family clothing when there was little cash for new fashions, led to her primary vocation for the remainder of her working life as a women&8217;s clothing alterations specialist. For almost 20 years, she was the alterations specialist for Liz &8216;n Polly&8217;s Apparel in Jackson, after which she retired to Fairhope in 1974, only to open a thriving business of her own, altering the clothes of Fairhope boutiques and residents out of her home.

Her parents and four of her siblings, Russell T. Harper of Louisville, Miss., Mary H. Stanford of Birmingham, George H. Harper of Montgomery and Vera Nell Saunders of Lexington, Ky, precede her in death.

Her sister, Merle H. Maybaum of Fairhope, and a host of nephews and nieces survive her.

In lieu of flowers donations may be made to Fairhope United Methodist Church Building Fund or another charity.