Mae Hee Yum Adams

Mae Hee Yum Adams, 91, of McCormick, South Carolina, passed away in her home on January 16, 2025, after a battle with chronic kidney disease.

Mae was born on April 4, 1933 to Nam Hyang Lee and Suck Jung Yum in Yanggu, Gangwon Province, Korea. Born into a noble family, she was a free spirit who enjoyed growing up in a small rural mountain village. However, during her teenage and young adult years, the Japanese occupation and the Korean War really affected her and changed her views on life as her family lost everything and had to flee south to save their lives. 

After having met the man of her dreams, a handsome Marine colonel, in Korea following the war, Mae made her way to the United States in 1960 where she married Colonel Hewitt Adams and raised two children. Although she worked from home as a seamstress, once her children were grown, she successfully owned her own tailor shop in Laurel, Maryland where she used her talents to make wedding dresses and keep folks in the Washington D.C. metro area looking spiffy.

It wasn’t until Mae turned 80 that she started writing books, something she always wanted to do. She self-published four books on Amazon entitled Precious Silver Chopsticks: A True Story of a Korean Noble Family (her memoirs about growing up in Korea), The Letters: A Lifetime Foreign Affair (love letters between her and Hewitt while they courted long distance), Coin for a Dream: and Other Korean Tales (Korean folk tales she was told when she was a child), and Diamond Raiders: Mount Kumgang Mystery (a fictional Korean whodunit). All these books have made Amazon’s #1 Best Seller list, which is something Mae was very proud of.

Mae was predeceased by her parents, her older sister Mairi, her younger brother InTaek, and her husband Hewitt. She is survived by her children Mae Lee Hafer (Harry) and Michael Adams (Donna); her three step grandchildren Rachel Helms (Jason), Rebecca Hafer, and Ashley Beth (David); and her three step great grandchildren Sarah and Charlie Helms, and Victoria Beth.

There will be no memorial service at this time. Mae’s inurnment will be alongside her husband at the U.S. Naval Academy in the spring.

A message of condolence may be sent to the family by visiting www.harrisfuneral.com.

Harris Funeral Home & Cremation Services of Abbeville is assisting the Adams family.