Ervin Tyler Ayers, widely known by family and friends as, ‘Ty’, has passed away of respiratory and heart failure in Seneca, South Carolina, on December 30th, 2025. He was his father’s namesake, and also the namesake of his paternal great-grandmother, Samantha ‘Manthy’ Tyler Ayers. 

Ty was born on his family’s farm near Nichols, in Marion County, South Carolina in 1941 and graduated from Mullins High School in 1959. He served in the U.S. Army’s Air Defense Command from 1959 to 1962, then attended Clemson University from 1962 to 1964. Ty became a Freemason in 1968; he also joined the related Scottish Rite Association, achieved the 32nd Degree, and became a Shriner in 1975. He was a volunteer with the Marine Corps League’s Veterans’ service in Georgia, from 1999 to 2001. Ty married but later divorced and has no children. He co-inherited his parent’s old tobacco farm near Nichols, but liquidated his interests after his brother Bill died in 2002.

He has worked in the trucking industry as a salesman and truck driver in Clemson, South Carolina, where he also operated a mobile home park called, “Suits Me Plantation Park”, which he named in honor of his grandfather’s Florida home.

As one of the last known members of the South Carolina branch of the Ayers Clan, he is preceded in death by his parents: Ervin Brown Ayers and Margie Ward Ayers and his brother: William Corley Ayers. 

He is survived by his niece Suzanne Ayers Scholtterback and her husband Derek of South Carolina. First cousins: Sybil Arnold Zikmund of Colorado and Kevin Arnold of South Carolina; and second cousins: Michael Ayers, Molly Ayers Floyd, Molly’s husband Buddy, and Susan Rose Ayers, all residing in Texas. Additionally he is survived by second cousins: Brad Ayers, Susan Gayle Ayers, Christopher Ayers, and Liz Ayers Williams, all of California.

An inurnment with a brief memorial service will be held on Wednesday, February 11, 2026, at 3:00 PM at M.J. Dolly Cooper Veteran Cemetery in Anderson, South Carolina. 

Cremation Society of SC-Brown Funerals is assisting the family of Mr. Ayres