AdvertiseHereH

Daily Archives: 05/17/2016

Barton, King earn state track crowns

Courtesy Photos
(LEFT) Daniel High School senior Laurie Barton broke the Class AAA girls’ state record in the 800-meter run on the way to her third consecutive state championship in the event. (RIGHT) Liberty High School sophomore Keyshawn King won his first Class AA state championship in the triple jump over the weekend at the South Carolina State Track Meet at Spring Valley High School.

COLUMBIA — A pair of record-breaking local athletes wrapped up the 2016 high school track and field season with individual state championships over the weekend at Spring Valley High School.

Daniel High School senior Laurie Barton, a Virginia Tech signee, won her third consecutive Class AAA championship in the girls’ 800-meter run at the state meet, breaking the state record along the way with a time of 2:09.62. Barton also earned silver medals as part of a pair of relay teams for the Lady Lions.

Meanwhile, Liberty High School sophomore Keyshawn King, who already holds the school’s triple jump record after breaking the mark of 45 feet, 11 inches held by his father, Kevin King, earned his first statewide gold medal, winning the event in the AA meet with a distance of 47 feet, 8 inches, improving upon his school record. King, who finished fourth in the triple jump at the state meet a year ago and earned all-region honors with a first-place finish in the Skyline AA meet last month, is also a two-year starter for the Red Devils’ basketball team.

Barton led the way for a strong performance from the Daniel girls’ team, as the Lady Lions took second overall behind state champion Beaufort.

Seventh-grader Ally Wilson also had a strong day for Daniel, taking second behind Barton in the 800-meter run, third in the 1,600-meter run and helping the team’s 4×400-meter and 4×800-meter relay teams to second-place finishes as well. Lady Lions eighth-grader Mari Cagle Lockhart finished fourth in the 3,200-meter run, while senior Chyna Cannon also earned points for Daniel with a fourth-place finish in the discus throw and a fifth-place finish in the shot put.

On the boys’ side of the Class AAA meet, Daniel’s Dante Gilliard finished fourth in the discus throw, while Pickens’ Ridge Clark recorded an eighth-place finish.

Easley junior Voc Tabron took third place in the 110-meter hurdles as the only local athlete in the Class AAAA meet.

 

Clemson to mark the 300th birthday of Hanover House

By: Ken Scar

Special to The Courier

news@thepccourier.com

CLEMSON — Clemson University will mark the 300th birthday of its oldest structural resident, Hanover House, with a public symposium featuring guest speakers from architecture and academics this Saturday, May 21 at the Strom Thurmond Institute on campus.

Speakers will include Dean Norton, director of horticulture at Mount Vernon; Patrick McMillan, director of the South Carolina Botanical Garden at Clemson; and Sally Reeves, co-author of the award-winning New Orleans Architecture series.

Hanover

Ken Scar/Photo
Clemson University’s 300 year-old Hanover House sits on campus in the South Carolina Botanical Garden.

Hanover House, a white home built in the early 1700s in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, was saved from destruction and brought to the Clemson campus by faculty and students in 1941.

The preservation and refurbishment of Hanover House was a triumph for Clemson’s budding undergraduate research programs, said Will Hiott, Clemson’s director of historic properties.

“The historic preservation of Hanover House by architects and historians was in reality an early Creative Inquiry project involving students, faculty and staff to photograph, blueprint and document the structure on its original site in Berkeley County and to relocate and reconstruct Hanover on campus in 1941,” he said. “Much of the preservation and restoration work was overseen by faculty and staff.”

Hanover House was built in 1716 for French Huguenot Paul de St. Julien in what is now Berkeley County. It was planned as a three-story house made of bricks and cypress and was considered very luxurious at the time. The original design was simple, featured balanced symmetry, a gambrel roof, dormers, and French details. St. Julien honored his French heritage in the mortar of one chimney where he inscribed “Peu a Peu,” from the French proverb, “Little by little the bird builds its nest.”

The house remained in the St. Julien and Ravenel families for nearly 150 years. In the 1940s, progress threatened to destroy the home, as it was in the path of the man-made Lake Moultrie. The Historic American Buildings Survey of the Santee-Cooper basin noted that Hanover was of national significance. So, Hanover was moved 250 miles north to the campus of Clemson University, home to the state’s architecture school. It was relocated to the South Carolina Botanical Garden in 1994 and now overlooks an heirloom vegetable garden.

“We are excited to celebrate this milestone of three centuries of the colonial cottage. This year we observe not only the tricentennial of Hanover but also its 75th year as part of Clemson University,” Hiott said.

“Hanover is truly a gem of Colonial architecture, which was deemed nationally important,” he said. “As we reflect on the tricentennial of the Hanover, we reflect on American history and the Huguenots, like the St. Juliens and Ravenels, who came to the Colonies, fought in the American Revolution with Francis Marion and aided in founding South Carolina.”

To register for the daylong symposium, go to http://blogs.clemson.edu/hanover-300/2016/05/02/hanover-300th-registration-link/.

Congrats

grad

Congratulations Lashae Rutz. We are so proud of you for all your accomplishments. We love you very much.

Love, Mom, Dad,

Renae and Matthew

 

Pickens spring game set for Bruce Field

PICKENS — Pickens High School football will make its return to historic Bruce Field as the Blue Flame’s annual Blue/White game is scheduled for Monday May 23, at 6 p.m.

Admission for the game is free, but second-year Pickens coach John Boggs, a former standout lineman for the Blue Flame, said spectators are asked to bring donations to support the team during the summer.

Boggs said items such as cases of water, Powerade, Gatorade, Pop Tarts, cereal bars, granola bars and other snacks would help the team as it travels to camps and competitions over the summer.

 

 

King’s Asphalt earns award

Pamela Dodson/Courier

The South Carolina Asphalt Pavement Association recently presented King’s Asphalt with an award for innovative pavement work for the work completed on the Doodle Trail. Winners must use asphalt in a way that asphalt isn’t typically used. Pictured are Pickens City Council members Lois Porter, Carlton Holley, Fletcher Perry, Pattie Welborn, Patrick Lark, mayor David Owens and Mike Crenshaw of King Asphalt during Monday’s city council work session.

 

Annual Blue Ridge Fest raises record amount

PICKENS — Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative and Blue Ridge Security Solutions have announced that the 19th annual Blue Ridge Fest, held earlier this month, raised a record-breaking amount of $201,000 to benefit local nonprofit organizations in Greenville, Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties.

This is the first year the employee organized and executed event surpassed the $200,000 mark. Since the event’s inception, almost two decades ago, Blue Ridge Fest has donated more than $2.2 million to numerous agencies in the Upstate area.

This year a number of nonprofits received funds from Blue Ridge Fest. The 2016 beneficiaries include Cancer Association of Anderson, Collins Children’s Home & Ministries, Center for Developmental Services, Dot’s Kitchen, Emerson Rose Heart Foundation, Feed A Hungry Child, Foothills Alliance, North Greenville Food Crisis Ministry, Rosa Clark Medical Center, Samaritan Health Clinic of Pickens County, The Dream Center of Pickens County and Wilderness Way Camp School.

Representatives from both Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative and Blue Ridge Security Solutions will host check presentations later this month for each nonprofit organization receiving funds.

“This year’s Blue Ridge Fest reached a long-time goal, allowing us to support our community at a very high level,” president and CEO Charles Dalton said.

 

Rec football, cheer signups open

PICKENS — The Pickens Recreation Department is currently registering youth for its fall 2016 cheerleading and football season.

Deadline for registration is June 8. Parents can register their children at the Pickens Recreation Center on Sangamo Road in Pickens.

The following age divisions are offered: 6-year-old/100 pounds; 7-8-year-old/100 pounds; 9-10-year-old/135 pounds; and 11-12-year-old/150 pounds.

There will be no weight limit, which means players weighing over the weight limit may still play but must play the interior line and not carry the football.

In the 11-12-year-old division, the first 28 boys to register will be taken and a waiting list will be kept after this number has registered.

Cheerleaders must cheer within same age classifications as football players. Birthdate cut-off is Sept. 1, 2016. Birth certificates are required at registration.

Following registration, a skills evaluation day will be held for football participants. The registration fee for football provides a jersey and helmet decals, while cheerleaders are provided a clinic and T-shirt. Football players are required to furnish their own equipment, and cheerleaders will have an additional uniform expense of $98. There will be two fitting dates for cheerleaders: Wednesday, June 1, and Wednesday, June 8, both from 6-7:30 p.m.

The registration fee is $45 for in-city residents and $55 for out-of-city residents. If you are interested in coaching or need additional information, call the Recreation Department at 878-2296.

 

Alliance Pickens’ workforce development program receives international acclaim

COUNTY — Alliance Pickens, with input from Pickens County existing industry partners, the Pickens County Career and Technology Center (CTC), and Tri-County Technical College, developed the Scholar Technician initiative in 2012 as a workforce development activity and economic development program. This initiative focuses on the subject areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), and its purpose is to encourage students to pursue technical careers while also assisting existing Pickens County STEM manufacturers with an increased volume and velocity of technically trained employees. By using extensive hands-on technical training, this initiative encourages students to apply STEM principles to solving problems with their minds and their hands.

The Scholar Technician initiative has received international acclaim. First, published for international release by Crown/Random House Publishing in January 2015, the award winning book Job U, authored by Nicholas Wyman, extensively discusses Scholar Technician. Wyman holds the Pickens County workforce development model as the model for the U.S. to follow in bridging the skills gap that exists between young people and employers.

“I showcased Pickens County, South Carolina, on the world stage as a shining example of community partnerships that work,” said Wyman.

Next, Forbes Magazine in July 2015 discussed Pickens County’s workforce development effort. In that article, Wyman states “Today, the best brand-name manufacturing companies send recruiters to Pickens County to look over the latest crop of tech-savvy students – like Major League football teams sending their scouts to check out the upcoming talent.”

In September 2015, Scholar Technician was recognized as the nation’s third best workforce development human capital program by the International Economic Development Council.

Lastly, on April 15, the New York Times published an op-ed by Katherine Newman and Hella Winston that commended the CTC as “an example of a school that works.” Newman and Winston also discuss the CTC in their 2016 book “Reskilling America: Learning to Labor in the 21st Century.”

Much of the success and acclaim of Scholar Technician® can be attributed to the tireless efforts of Alliance Pickens, existing Pickens County industry, and the CTC for working together to enlighten students of the careers awaiting them and giving these students the encouragement to learn and develop the skills required of these careers.

 

A bitter pill to swallow

We’ve owned many Chihuahuas in our time, but we’ve never owned one like Toby Lee Fowler. They’ve all been intelligent little dogs, but he is perhaps the smartest of all. He is certainly the most willful and manipulative dog we’ve ever had, and he definitely has his own agenda.

The dog guide that tells you how to train your puppy has proved useless with Toby Lee. Obviously, he thinks the book should be banned. He certainly ignores everything in it.olivia6-25 Page 4A.indd

It’s very like the baby book they used to give you when you were ready to bring the new baby home from the hospital filled with hope and expectations. And then your baby cries and cries, and nothing in the baby book works.

Well, Toby’s issue is with obedience. He pretends to be deaf when he is called. He won’t even turn your way, but continues to stroll about the yard looking at grass and sniffing the plants. He might glance at you as if to say, “what’s your problem?,” but clearly it has nothing to do with him.

And it’s not as though he doesn’t understand what you’re saying. He does. If it’s something he wants to do, then he’s Johnny on the spot.

But if it’s something unimportant to him, he ignores you.

Most of our previous Chihuahuas were very picky eaters. He is also an exception to that rule. We once had a Chihuahua, Tinkerbell, who went on a three-day hunger strike, refusing to eat her dog food. We finally had to feed her egg yolk, honey and canned milk, because she’d gotten so weak she couldn’t walk. She simply wouldn’t eat dry dog food, so we had to feed her canned dog food. And she never ate a whole lot of that. But she was affectionate and cooperative in every other way.

Choco was a sweetheart. She would eat just to please us, but never seemed really hungry. Sometimes the children would offer her tidbits from their plates. She wouldn’t eat them, but would take them away and hide them, just to be polite.

Cheetah was a lovey dove. She would eat puppy chow, but for a long time she’d only eat a few tidbits every now and. She enjoyed playing with her dry food and would toss it into the air and try to catch it.

But Toby Lee Fowler would probably eat a rock if you had one on your plate. He is a shameless beggar and will carry on as though he has been starved. If you relent and give him anything, it’s all over. Occasionally he’ll be given a pork chop bone — not by me — and he’ll carry it around and put it in his bed and gnaw it and keep it safe. If an attempt is made to take it away, he’ll run with it and a chase will take place. He’s pretty fast and maneuvers like nothing you’ve ever seen. When he runs really fast, his ears go straight back and he’s just a blur.

He always has a plan. When he’s ready to go to bed at night, he will attempt to make you cut off TV and go upstairs. He’ll run from the TV to you and then to the foot of the stairs. He’ll bark, and if you ignore that, he’ll attempt to talk, facing you and moving his mouth around to try to form words. He’ll keep this up until he gets his way. He has more stamina than I and will wear me down.

I no longer have the energy to stay on top of a Chihuahua. Apparently there’s been a role reversal. But he is an engaging little scamp and is loving and loyal. All in all, we’re happy with the little devil. He’s certainly one of the most entertaining little dogs we’ve ever owned. He may not be perfect, but he’s ours and we love him.

 

Courier Letters to the Editor 5-18-16

Suggestions for the creed

Dear Editor,

The Oconee County Republican Party has recently opened a headquarters office on Townville Street in Seneca. Prominently displayed in the storefront window is a document titled “The Republican Creed.” It consists largely of a list of the writer’s choices of “rather thans” in conducting his affairs (opportunity rather than security; incentive rather than dole; fulfillment rather than utopia; freedom rather than beneficence, etc.).

The writer might consider a choice between two other alternatives: originality rather than plagiarism. The content of the “creed” is apparently lifted almost verbatim from a piece by Dean Alfange (or, going back further, maybe Thomas Paine).

We would all like to see the Republicans adopt a “creed” that includes such things as: their constructive participation, rather than overt obstructionism, in the conduct of our nation’s affairs; working toward increasing voter participation in elections, rather than the disenfranchisement of thousands through repressive and unnecessary voter identification requirements; working toward every American having health insurance, rather than refusing to allow hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians to have insurance that is readily available for them; working toward solutions to real problems, like our disintegrating infrastructure, rather than frittering away their time and effort on such foolishness as legislation to ban Sharia law in South Carolina.

My party’s Oconee County headquarters office is across the street from the Republican office. If the writer of “The Republican Creed” would like to participate in a sincere, constructive effort in dealing with the nation’s governance, he might consider joining us.

John Landers

Liberty

 

Someday you will fly

Dear Editor,

“Born in Hell, live in Hell, die and go to Hell.” These words were written on the wall of a local laundromat. I was 15 years old, and upon reading those words I never forgot them.

What we have here is a person who has given up on life, probably because they thought all life is like what they grew up around. I remember when I was growing up I caught a lot of flak and grief from those I grew up with. I kept telling myself that there was a better world somewhere and I would find it.

It gave me hope and helped me keep my sanity.

Two things that were my strength, no matter how rough it got, were my faith and my dreams.

Faith in a higher power — God, who takes His vengeance on our enemies. Truly he does. As for my dreams, I used to draw and paint. Never did make it as a cartoonist, but it kept me sane.

Any child or young person reading this, I want you not to give up. Smoking your brain cells out on marijuana or crawling in a liquior bottle to drown your sorrows only adds to the problem.

I left school the night of graduation, and after going to summer school left forever.

You can find your little bit of Heaven someday. Life does not end at 18. At least it didn’t for me. My best years came later, as I had believed. After leaving school, I lost my job and had to work in another town. I found I was right — that not everywhere is the same as where you grow up.

These people were rank strangers who took me in.

After a while, they became my friends, and shortly thereafter, they became family.

I worked in Walhalla for 32 years and lived there for two years in the late ‘70s.

I’ve since had to leave for another job in another place.

God has been good. I have always had good people to work with, as with the people at the new place I work at. It’s been 10 years, and I can’t complain. These people are family, too. So glad I didn’t give up like so many do. There is a better world out there. Don’t give up — your time to celebrate will come. Just stay straight and keep hoping. To give up hope is to be defeated.

Don’t ever give up — you will make it someday if you don’t ever give up. Someday, as the eagle, you, too, will spread your wings and fly.

Eddie Boggs

Westminster