County wrong to threaten to su

County wrong to threaten to sue

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By Editorial Board  Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 12:00 am

Both the State Law Enforcement Division and the State Budget & Control Board are looking into purchases made by the town of Fort Lawn and particularly one officer. Procedures weren’t followed. We’ll know soon enough whether that means anything criminal occured.

Tempers are running hot, and people are saying and writing all sorts of things, including accusations against a couple of public officials, comments that have absolutely nothing to do with the matter. Some go way beyond the pale. Some nasty comments were posted in our web stories about this fuss. We yanked them, and we’ll continue to pull comments we believe to be libelous.That is not our major concern.

The questions being raised about the purchases are legitimate. But many comments go beyond legitimate inquiry.

People are entitled to their opinion, and in America, free to share it. But you can’t say anything and everything about anybody. So people need to calm down and let the investigation and review run their courses.

That’s what County Attorney Joanie Winters had in mind when she went to Fort Lawn last week.

That’s not how it came across. She wanted to urge patience for the results of the investigation. That’s valid. She wanted to chide Fort Lawn Town Council for its handling of the affair. That’s possibly valid. Lastly, she said she wanted to stop slanderous and defamatory comments.

We agree the latter should stop.

But she did not say she was representing the officials as a private attorney. She said Chester County would take legal action if the “defamation” continued. In other words, Chester County would sue its own citizens.

There was obviously more to her statement than the above threat. (Her entire statement is online here for you to see.)

But once uttered, the threat was all anyone could or would hear.

She explicitly said the county would take legal action to stop “defamation.” She told us she was instructed to go to Fort Lawn by Chester County Supervisor Carlisle Roddey.

Your average Joe doesn’t know exactly what defamation and slander are. So when they hear a threat to take legal action to stop it, it doesn’t put a stop to just slander and defamation. People wonder if their comments are legitimate questions or will get them sued for slander. They are given pause.

Such a pause means speech is chilled.

We believe the officials being questioned to be honorable. We regret and are frankly horrified by some of the things being hurled at their feet. They may indeed have been slandered. If so, we hope they take the slanderers to court and win a civil judgment.

But they need to do that as private citizens. Chester County has no business threatening to sue its citizens. That horrifies us more than slander.

We believe the County Attorney and County Supervisor erred in taking this action. They owe their constituents an apology and a promise never again to consider this kind of tactic.

Picking on the poor?

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Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 12:00 am

We wrote an editorial a few weeks ago about Gov. Mark Sanford, saying that many times he is unfortunately right about things.
We say unfortunately because there seems always to be something off in the way he delivers his message. At the time, he was wanting an audit of the S.C. Employment Security Commission and a few reasonable changes. The bit that was off was his threat to not apply to the federal government for a loan that would extend unemployment benefits unless he got what he wanted. The fund that pays benefits to South Carolinians out of work has been tapped pretty hard this year and was in danger of running out without the loan.

The governor took an unreasonable step to go get a reasonable thing. The threat brought unneeded distress and alarm to people who are unemployed. In other words, the vulnerable in our society, mostly poor folk.

He’s done this time and time again, and he’s doing it again. Right now, he’s calling for the closure of USC Lancaster and a couple of other regional campuses of the USC system. You will see a letter to the editor that touches on this threat in today’s edition, as well as a guest column from the dean of USCL that appeared first in The Lancaster News.

We think USCL is an important and viable option for Chester County residents seeking post-secondary education. It’s cheaper than Winthrop, for one thing. It’s easier to get into. USCL is a two-year campus. It might get you a two-year degree, or it might prep you enough to advance to the main campus in Columbia.

USCL is an option for people here in Chester, but it’s a vital part of the life’s blood of Lancaster. We’ll bet some of the students attending it have no other option. We’ll bet good money some of the students attending that school walk to campus.

Neither Winthrop nor York Tech and its two regional campuses will ever be an option for a poor Lancaster kid who has to walk to classes. So we absolutely cannot agree that Sanford has a good, specific idea here. But he’s a smart guy. Every community doesn’t need its own college. But every community needs a reasonable option.

The problem here is the way Gov. Sanford often goes about making a point. His budget usually ends up being ignored, which can be a problem. His proposals take into account the nature of non-recurring money, while the Legislature tends to ignore the problem. The General Assembly’s approach is one reason the budget pinch we are in right now is so severe.

But to make his point, again, Sanford targets the most vulnerable in our society. He looks at the regional campuses, we think, from the state budget side. He sees what is spent on teachers and staff. On light bulbs and guys to mop the floors. He doesn’t focus on the kids attending classes, kids who need it desperately.

He did it earlier this year with the loan for unemployment benefits. He’s attacked poor, rural campuses before. When he makes such calls, the people in the attacked communities, who should be working on other things, do rise up and defend their campuses from their own governor.

He’s picking on the poor. It’s unseemly.

Should he have mentioned it?

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Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 12:00 a.m.

Retiring Chester County School Superintendent Larry Heath spoke to the Rotary Club last week.

At one point laying this out, he hesitated.He discussed why he is retiring now. He says he wants to spend more time with his family, specifically his youngest daughter.

“I probably shouldn’t say this,” he said. But he went ahead and did.

In the early ’90s, after being with the district for almost 20 years, he was promoted to assistant superintendent. He and his wife started looking at homes in Chester.

They were told by a real estate agent that a home on York Street was under contract. Heath had a friend, “of lighter skin color,” who was also looking. When that person looked at that house, they were not told that. The Heaths decided not to move here.

There are reasons why Heath maybe shouldn’t have mentioned it. First, many years have passed. America has elected a black president. Things have changed. Maybe such things don’t happen here any more.

We don’t think it much matters who showed the home. Was it the agent’s own active bias? Or was it the agent swallowing down the disgust, as he or she just did what a homeowner wanted. What matters is someone had that bias here.

Some people questioned his commitment to the county, because his family wasn’t here. Heath maintained an apartment here, and on weekends commuted back to his home a couple of counties away. It was not so far that, in the face of an emergency, he couldn’t make it back in time.

For example, the last time Chester County had a big snowfall, Heath was here, in the county, almost alone at the district office, making calls.

His term as superintendent hasn’t been a large part of his time in Chester County, but he has had a long and complete career here, moving up from being a teacher, right to the top.

It’s a remarkable success story for anyone in education, no matter their color. He should be proud of what he has done here, and we should be proud of him as well.

It might lessen that career achievement for some who will now focus on this revelation and forget everything else he has done.

Yet we see a clear example of someone who devoted a career to us, even after being made to feel unwelcome to live among us.

Most importantly, this is a pernicious kind of racism. It’s subtle and usually hidden.It might go on every day, but we almost never, ever find out about it. We need to know that it happens, and we need to do our best to make sure it never happens again.

MORE BREAKING SPORTS

If you weren't impressed before by our sports editor, be impressed now.
It was just a tiny text message he sent me on my cell phone.
"Chester beat Byrnes in the 7on7 passing camp. Get it on the Web."
The story now at OnlineChester.com is fleshed out a bit more than that -- there's a link to our sports headlines to the right if you want to check it out.
No, the impressive part of the e-mail was the rest of the message, combined with the time.
"Thanks 4 coming. Shoulda hung around for the drunken dancing."
It was sent at 1:13 a.m. Sunday.
Travis got married Saturday. He told me he wasn't taking his cell phone on his honeymoon. I assume that he got to a hotel somewhere for the Saturday night, saw it, thought of his readers, and sent it on. I hope he left the phone with someone else so that further updates will have to wait until he gets back.
Just in case, I sent him a text message back, saying I'm marginally sorry I left before the drunken dancing. But while I hadn't heard about that sequel, I'm not a big fan of Patrick Swayze movies anyway.
I didn't even want to make a joke with him when I got to talk to him for five seconds at the reception about doing some work next week.
But he's thinking about his readers, and I'm impressed, again.

Third Harris Award

Harris Award for Editorial Writing

The judge looked at three entries and wrote: "Short but witty, Enough info to inform, enough opinion to interest."
(I think the first one is the "witty" one.)

State school board 'don't' need this guy
The current fuss brewing at the state level is one of those in which the real issue is obscured by some huffing and puffing on
what should be a minor side issue.
The Anderson County legislative delegation appointed a man to serve on the state Board of Education who has a checkered past in the area of race relations. He’s a member of a Confederate group some people question and once sold a textbook that tried subtle revisionism on the sensitive subject of the Holocaust.
He tried to downplay it, saying he wasn’t aware of everything in the textbook, then saying the questionable section was just in a few chapters and not the overall text. He sold the textbook to some private schools and to some parents homeschooling their children.
Because of a past some say is checkered, S.C. Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum says she wants to fight his appointment to the state board. The man wasn’t backed universally by the Anderson County delegation. He was appointed by a close, 4-3 vote.
Our country’s electorate is divided between two political extremes. At times, South Carolina can be divided in many ways, and the racial divide usually is one of the widest we must cross.
This man isn’t being elected to represent Chester County on the state board, but his vote and his voice will be one of many that sets education policy at a statewide level. Every resident of
South Carolina has a stake in each individual member of the state Board of Education because this board sets education policy for a state that isn’t doing the best possible job educating its young people. The Board of Education flies largely under most people’s notice, but it can have a vast effect at the right time.
The state Department of Education is currently running a South Carolina school district, the Allendale County District, partly because the state Board voted to declare an educational emergency in that district.
People are entitled to their opinions. We don’t think his are particularly helpful to our state, but we don’t condemn him as a potential member of the State Board because of the opinions he holds.
We think he is unfit for another reason. When this became a political flap, he told many reporters, according to the Associated Press, “Ain’t no one going to force me out.”
He doesn’t belong on the state Board of Education. He belongs back in school, where someone ought to teach him what a double negative is.
Dec. 15, 2004

Hog dogging? It's not a sport
It isn’t often that South Carolina is the tops of a national category. But given our druthers, we’d rather South Carolina in general and Chester County in specific not be tops in the dubious sport of “hog-dogging.”
Anybody who wants to hunt and raise their kids to lead a sportsman’s life has no problem with this newspaper.
But anyone who thinks that siccin’ one animal on another is a sport is missing something. A heart, probably. The animal fighting called “hog dogging” isn’t even a fair fight.
The most basic line of defense or attack for the boar, the tusks, the tusks of the boar, are whittled down or pulled out. The boar, by definition “feral” or wild, can’t defend itself as its natural instincts tell it to.
In that sense, it isn’t a sport. It’s more akin to watching the Harlem Globetrotters take on the Washington Generals. By definition, the Generals don’t have the skills to beat the Globetrotters and they lose. Every single time out, they lose.
So it’s an exhibition, if one wants to be so kind. But the Globetrotters just humiliate the Generals. The Generals don’t get bitten, don’t get knocked to the ground, don’t get their legs broken.
All such injuries were reportedly found on 15 wild hogs recovered from during a raid of a residence outside Fort Lawn.
We are making absolutely no comment about those arrested in relation to that raid. There are now four people charged with various crimes in connection with “hog-dogging” in Chester County. Law enforcement is working on the case, and at some point, it will take the evidence and present it to a jury of Chester County citizens, who will sooner or later decide if those arrested were indeed connected with this and if any possible connection is a crime.
No, we’re just talking about this, and other kinds of animal “fighting,” and we want to be clear from the outset.
This isn’t a sport. It’s a barbaric practice done by people who think that animals are just “critters.” They think that the animals they use to slake their own blood thirst have no soul and feel no pain. Most often, the reverse is true.
We are judged on how we treat those least able to protect themselves. Pitting animals against each other for sport isn’t a sport. It’s cruel.
Those who violently treat animals are more prone to violence, some studies have shown. They are deadened to the impact of violence.
There’s a special place in hell for people who mistreat animals.
Dec. 29, 2004

Why didn’t council hire locally for suit?
We’re scratching our heads over Chester County’s recent actions in the drawn-out legal battle over the referendum on the form of government.
County Attorney Joan E. Winters said at the beginning of the process — and other county officials have reiterated throughout the process — that this is not a confrontational process, per se. The county is merely asking the court for guidance on what seems to be a difficult issue.
But the suit asking for a declaratory judgment filed by Winters is framed in an adversarial way.
It says on its face, Chester County versus the county Election Commission. Its pleadings take issue with commission actions, and it asks the court to overturn the commission’s actions and throw out the referendum.
The suit and a related filing have been delayed because the commission didn’t have a lawyer.
Winters said from the outset she could not represent both the commission and the council. Her primary client most days is Chester County Council, and that is who she is representing.
There is nothing wrong with that, but more should have been done, earlier on, to secure a lawyer for the commission. The S.C. Attorney General’s office told the paper of a similar case, which suggests the commission should pick a lawyer and submit the bill to the council.
Before that opinion was sought, however, the council somehow got the idea it was entitled to do more than just pay the bill. Councilmen got the idea they ought to pick the lawyer for the commission, even though they are suing the commission.
When the commission finally got around to shopping around for an attorney, it found an election law expert from Columbia it wanted to hire.
The council balked at the price, and one member went so far as to suggest the county should hire someone “local” to represent the commission.
The council had several meetings behind closed doors before it finally came up with a lawyer — a local one — for the commission.
The average member of the public must think it odd the council thinks it has the right to pick the attorney for the commission. Only one councilman said the commission should hire its own lawyer.
The commission said no, and it intends to use the lawyer it wanted back in May.
The case, now in its fifth month without a reply from the commission, is complex. The county’s legal team decided to get some help.
Since the commission rejected the lawyer picked by the council, he was obviously available, and he obviously fit the council’s price range. So did the council, in hiring a lawyer to help Winters, stick to the criteria it used in picking a lawyer for the commission?
No.
Councilmen hired a retired judge from Lancaster County. He isn’t local, and he isn’t cheap. Seems the council is saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Aug. 17, 2005, The News & Reporter

An unlikely hero of the G.F. fire tragedy

There will be no shortage of people, papers, television stations praising our firefighters and law enforcement in the coming days, now that the fire at the J.P. Stevens Mill No. 3 has been put out and people are beginning to go home.
We will join in that chorus, because we were there and saw not only the courage of the firefighters, the dedication, but also the intelligence of their approach.
It’s easy and obvious to praise the guys with the hoses and walkie-talkies, but the first hero of the crisis in Great Falls we want to honor is not so obvious and easy.
He’s a 13-year-old with a push broom, but we are a little awestruck by James Corder. A Great Falls school custodial official praised the young man as well, saying he is “jam up and jelly tight.”
Great Falls Middle School Facility Supervisor Henry Stevenson said 13-year-old James Corder did “everything” Stevenson asked him to do.
Corder could have sat back and let others do for him. Like hundreds of others, he came to the shelter at the middle school as an evacuee.
He could have sat back and done puzzles and watched TV and expected others to cater to his needs. It’s understandable. The volunteers who work these shelters want to cater to people in trouble.
But James Corder pitched in. He grabbed a broom and swept the floor. He moved tables and chairs for others. Whatever was needed, he was a go-to guy for Stevenson.
Stevenson himself is worthy of praise as well. He and his crew were supposed to be closing the middle school for the summer Instead, he was working late, late nights, getting maybe six hours of sleep, helping get whatever the volunteers needed that the school could provide.
Stevenson’s “helper,” this 13-year-old kid, had the right attitude from the start.
“I’m staying here right now, sir,” Corder said Friday night, broom in hand. “I’ve been here since Thursday. It’s like our house right now. You want to keep it clean.”
He was sweeping his “house.”
The boy finally gave it up for the night Friday at one point, Stevenson said.
“When he got down, he fell right asleep.”
In other words, Corder worked himself into exhaustion when he could have been watching TV.
Some evacuees were focused on what they could get out of this. It’s understandable. A tragedy came and took their lives away for a week. But this young man asked not what his community could do for him, but what he could do for his community.
His only tool was that broom, but he is as worthy a hero as anyone with a hose.
He was brought up right. His mother Starlene should be proud of him,.
We are.

Published Wednesday, June 14, 2006.

The Mount Rushmore of Sports -- YOU decide here

By Travis Jenkins
tjenkins@onlinechester.com

This summer, The News & Reporter embarked on a series of articles entitled “Chester County's Mount Rushmore of Sports” which spotlighted 10 of the best athletes and coaches in the county's history. Of course, there isn't room for 10 people on Mount Rushmore, so we need your help to whittle the list down.

Our list of 10 this summer included:
Devan Downey – A Chester High graduate, Downey is the state's second all-time leading boys scorer with 2,738 career points. He ranks in the top five in 10 other all-time statistical categories. Downey was on the All-Big East Freshman team at Cincinnati, but transferred to South Carolina after that year. As a Gamecock, Downey has been an All-SEC performer twice and looks ready to earn a spot on that list for the third time this season. He is currently averaging 17.5 points a game.

Allison Feaster – Feaster is the second leading scorer in the history of girls basketball in the state with a career total of 3,427 points. She helped Chester to a state title in 1993. Feaster holds the career records at Harvard for most career points (2,312), rebounds (1,157) and steals (308) among other marks. She helped Harvard to the first, and only, No. 16 over No. 1 seed upset in the history of the NCAA men's or women's basketball tournaments with a win over Stanford in 1998. Feaster has enjoyed a long career in the professional ranks playing both in the WNBA and abroad.

Odell Williams – A multi-sport stand-out at Finley High School, Williams is best remembered for his football exploits for the Blue Jackets. Williams was a starter at center and linebacker and was dominant at both positions, earning a spot in an all-star game for the top players from South Carolina's black high schools. Williams went on to play semi-pro football and is now the owner and operator of Williams Concrete. He is also a city councilman and is involved in several Finley alumni groups.

Bennie McMurray – McMurray was a good athlete, earning a baseball scholarship to S.C. State University, but his coaching acumen is what really sets him apart. During his tenure at Lewisville High School, McMurray won eight state titles in football and baseball and sent a steady stream of players to the college ranks. Three of his charges made it to the NFL and one made it to majors as a baseball player. He left Lewisville to build the program at Waddell High in North Carolina. He is currently the head football coach at Lancaster High.

Banks McFadden – McFadden led Great Falls High School to two state basketball titles and one state football championship in the 1930s. At what was then called Clemson A&M, McFadden was dominant in three sports. As a basketball player he led Clemson to a win in the 1939 Southern Conference Tournament, the school's only post-season basketball tourney win. He averaged 12.9 points a game on the court, a big total in the pre-shot clock era. As a senior, he had more than 1,000 total yards for the football team, intercepted two passes, was among the team leaders in tackles and averaged 43.5 yards a punt for a team that went on to beat Boston College in the Cotton Bowl. McFadden was also on the track team, where he recorded 28 first place finishes. McFadden played one season in the NFL, leading the league in total yardage. He coached track, basketball and was a football assistant for manyyears at Clemson.

Bill Watts – He was good ball player in his day, but Watts is probably best remembered for putting together some of the top little league teams in Chester. He also integrated the Chester Dixie Youth Leagues, bringing the first two black players into the league in 1970. (See early Chock Full O' Chester postings about Watts below this post.)

R.E. “Ears” Wilson – Wilson coached the Chester football team to a state title in 1963. It remains the last state title won by any boys team at Chester High. Wilson went on to coach a pair of 10-win teams at South Florence High School.

John Smith – Smith entered this basketball season with 816 career victories, the most in the history of the state. In his 40 years at Great Falls High, Smith has taken his team to the upperstate finals 19 times, to state 16 times and has won 6 state championships. Great Falls has also won 15 region titles in the last 16 years.

Sheldon Brown – Brown led Lewisville to a state football crown as a senior, rushing for 2,000 yards and providing lock-down coverage in the secondary as a defensive back. At the University of South Carolina, Brown was a two-time All-SEC pick and a two-time All-American. A second-round pick in the 2002 draft by the Philadelphia Eagles, Brown is in his sixth season as a starter and has never missed a game. Brown has 13 career picks and helped his team to a Super Bowl appearance in 2005.

Marion Campbell – Campbell was a two-time Shrine Bowl pick as a defensive linemen, earned All-SEC recognition three times at Georgia, made the All-Army team, won an NFL championship with the Eagles in 1960, served as a position coach and coordinator for many years (he was the defensive coordinator for the 1980 Eagles team that went to the Super Bowl) and was the head coach of the Eagles and Falcons.

Additionally, we are adding a few more worthy names to the mix.

Joe Collins – Collins came to Chester High School in the '40s when the football team was struggling. He never won a state crown, but he returned Chester to its former glory, posting a 51-15-6 record in one seven season stretch. He also raised money to build his team a stadium.

Maurice Morris – Morris earned a Shrine Bowl invite by rushing for 1,600 yards and 25 touchdowns as a senior at Chester High. He set the all-time junior college total yardage record (3,708 yards), then went to Oregon where he became the first running back in school history to post consecutive 1,000 yard seasons. Morris spent seven seasons with the Seattle Seahawks after being a second-round pick in 2002. He started off as a kick returner. He eventually became the top back-up for NFL MVP Shaun Alexander. He rarely got to start, but he ably filled in whenever Alexander was injured. His best year in Seattle was in 2007, when he ran for 628 yards and four scores. He added 23 catches that year. This past off-season, Morris signed with Detroit. Because of injury, he is now Detroit's starter. Morris has 2,894 yards rushing in his career and 7 touchdowns. He also has 91 grabs for 693 yards and four more scores.

Kenneth Callicutt – After earning a slot in the 1973 Shrine Bowl after a terrific career at Chester High School, Callicutt went to Clemson. One of the top running backs in team history, Callicutt complied 2,256 career rushing yards. Callicutt played for the Detroit Lions from 1978-1982 where he was a stand-out special teams player, compiling 742 career kick return yards and eight caused fumbles. Callicutt was named "Special Teams MVP" twice while with the Lions.

Keith Richardson – Richardson was a 1958 Shrine Bowl pick out of Chester High. He served as an assistant to legendary Woodruff football Coach Willie Varner before becoming a legendary coach in his own right. Richardson went to Clinton High, where he posted a 239-57-2 record in 24 seasons. His teams won six state titles. He coached the girls tennis team to 3 state championships, won the state's "Coach of the Year" award six times and was named the "Kellogg's Coach of the Year" once. Richardson served as the head of the S.C. Athletic Coaches Association for many years and was recently awarded the "Order of the Palmetto" the most prestigious civilian honor a South Carolinian can receive.

Take a look to the right and vote. You can select multiple choices, but we only need four.
Want to make a comment? Read this story here on OnlineChester.com and leave a comment.

Final results of the poll will be revealed soon.