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Lyn Riddle

On living life, no matter the challenges

by Lyn Riddle

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Jun
5

It is our tendency as journalists to celebrate those who come in first.

But sometimes the one who comes in last has the best story.

And that was so in the Stars and Stripes Challenge, held last Sunday to raise money for cancer research and its victims.

Jana Morse was the last bicyclist to cross the finish line. She’s a 44-year-old internist who before Sunday had ridden no more than 45 miles at a time.

She took on the 100-mile challenge, a grueling ride from Gateway Park in Travelers Rest to Camp Spearhead to Campbell’s Covered Bridge to Dacusville and back to the park. Hills, mountains, flatland, the ultimate biking challenge.

Morse said she signed up simply because she wanted to help the cause. Her husband, Hywel, has been diagnosed with cancer twice, in December 2009 of leukemia and last October he unwent surgery – she calls it a seek and destroy mission – after a knot in his jaw was found to be malignant.

“I’ll do anything to raise money for cancer,” she said. “But when I signed up it was 70 degrees.”

Last Sunday it was in the 90s. She missed a rest stop at about 30 miles and by 50 she had severe cramping in her legs. She was becoming dehydrated but as a doctor knew the signs and knew just how far she could push herself. She’d been pedaling since 7:30 a.m. It was well past noon, and all the other racers had finished.

“We had heard this lady was out there,” said Kevin Dunn, the race organizer.

The sweeper vehicle, sent to pick up cones and make sure everyone is off the course, found her at about 90 miles. Inside the car was a medic and a coach. And the coach just happened to have his bike and gear.

USA Cycling coach John Williams rode with her the last 10 miles. He offered information about what the course ahead looked like and, perhaps most important encouragement.

When they rolled across the finish line at about 4 p.m., the dozen or so race volunteers still there, all cried.

“I had to walk away,” Dunn said. Three girls gave her roses. Her husband and their son, Timmy, were there.

By then, all the folks waiting for Morse had heard her story.

It’s not only the uncertainty and fear that cancer brings, but also that the couple has lost two children to a rare genetic malady called Vici syndrome. This syndrome is so rare the Morse children were the seventh and eighth children in the world to be diagnosed with it. Most patients live no more than a year, some as long as three.

Tomas, the eldest, and Carys, the youngest, were never able to walk or talk. Some days they suffered hundreds of seizures. Eventually they could not swallow. They had heart problems.

The syndrome is a lifetime of hospitals and dashed dreams. Timmy does not have the syndrome.

“Our vacation home was Greenville Hospital System,” Morse said.

Tomos defied the odds and lived for eight and a half years.

“We’re stubborn,” Morse said. During the ice storm of 2006, the Morses lost power and moved in with her brother. When they returned home, they got Tomos out of the car and he was dead.

Carys, with the same platinum blond hair and porcelain skin as her brother and other Vici syndrome patients, died in her sleep last October, two weeks after her father’s cancer surgery. Hywel had quit work as a chemical engineer to stay home with her. He nursed her even as he went through chemotherapy, which put the leukemia in remission.

And that – all those life challenges – was what she was riding for last Sunday.

“A lot of people are dealing with stuff like this and they want to hide from it,” Dunn said. “She didn’t want to hide. She was a zest for life.”

“Remission is not a cure,” she said. “I’m not going to lose anyone else.”

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Lyn Riddle

On finding the good in people

by Lyn Riddle

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Mar
20

It was a Tuesday night, the regular meeting of Boy Scout Troop 56.

May 17, 2005.

The boys – 11 to 18 – filed into St. Mark United Methodist Church on North Franklin Road to discover someone had broken into the scout room. Equipment and other scout items were heaped in the middle of the room. The place was ransacked.

Scoutmaster Paul Russell took inventory.

Missing were four tents, two black powder pistols, a black powderhorn, a Buckskin outfit Russell had made and needed for the national Jamboree just a few weeks away.

One of the pistols was an antique, worth about $1,400. The other was a replica Russell crafted himself. The pistols were similar to the Kentucky firearms used by Daniel Boone. And they were double loaded with black powder and balls.

Oddly, whoever did the crime took awards and certificates from frames on the wall and then hung the empty frames back up.

The boys were angry. Who steals from the Scouts? In a church? Who could have done this? How did they know this stuff was in there? So many questions.

Russell called the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office. A report was filed. And everyone went about their lives.

Russell quickly made a new buckskin outfit for the Jamboree and continued to lead the troop. Scouting has been in his life since 1959 when he joined the Cub Scouts in Providence, R.I. He is an Eagle scout, as is his 26-year-old son, and has been a scoutmaster in Greenville County since 1973. Russell, 58, is works in maintenance for northern area of the Greenville County Recreation Department.

On a recent Saturday morning, Russell pulled up to the church to meet his scouts for a day of geocaching. Piled up outside the door were most of the things that had been stolen almost six years before.

The tents. The awards. The pistols, still loaded. Sitting out in the open beside the church. The buckskin and a few items Russell considers insignificant were still missing.

“I just about cried,” Russell said. “It floored me.”

He got out his Blackberry and snapped some pictures.

Two notes had been left behind. The person said he had started going to church and felt guilty for what he had done. He wanted to make amends. He wanted forgiveness. He said he couldn’t return all the items because another person with him that day had them.

The note was signed Matthew Price.

Russell searched his records and never had a scout by that name. And, of course, he doesn’t know for sure whether that is the real name of the person who took the items.

“It makes you wonder,” Russell said. “Hopefully he did find religion.”

All of the boys in the 2005 troop have grown up and moved on, but the lesson wasn’t lost on the members of Troop 56. A wrong was done and then made right – to some extent.

A guilty conscience is a powerful thing.

And what of Russell? Does he forgive? Here’s what he said:

“Yes, ma’am. Wouldn’t do me no good to hold it against him. I do wonder who he was with.”

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Lyn Riddle

On doing what it takes

by Lyn Riddle

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Feb
22

Ali and Chad Tumblin celebrated the fourth birthday of their oldest son, Ty, last Wednesday.

It’s not overstating the situation to say they’re lucky he’s still alive.

Here’s how Mrs. Tumblin puts it: “To most people food can be a source of healing, but for our family, it can kill.”

Ty was born allergic to milk, nuts, egg, wheat, soy, corn and oats.  This is not your everyday allergy. It’s the sort where his throat swells and if he doesn’t get a shot and to the hospital within minutes his throat will close completely.

And it’s not only if he eats foods he’s allergic to. A reaction also can happen if he touches something or someone with food residue.

Imagine.

That means most restaurants are off limits. Parks. Birthday parties. Other people’s homes. Other people’s children. Other people.

Halloween is a complication. Thanksgiving.

Doctors estimate about 8 percent of children have some sort of food allergy and most outgrow them by the time they’re five.

By the time Ty was 2, he had outgrown his intolerance of wheat, soy, corn and oats. It was a time of rejoicing. Christmas 2009 brought cheers from the kitchen as Mrs. Tumblin baked for her family.

“I’m so thankful for the smell of sugar cookies in the air and yesterday we made Chex mix with his Earth Balance butter,” she said then. “Of course Ty doesn’t eat any of this but his mommy sure does.

That’s right. The whole family is on what they call the Ty diet. It makes a difficult life easier. They don’t have to worry about washing their hands and face every time they eat or touch food. They don’t have to worry about residue on the kitchen table.

For Ty, milk, nuts and egg remain deadly.

Three times, despite all the lengths they have gone through to make the world safe for their son, the Tumblins have had to whip out an EpiPen and inject Ty with epinephrine, a dose that lasts only long enough to get to the hospital by ambulance.

“Sometimes I get so mad that Ty has to go through this that I just want to lay on my back kicking and screaming and pitch the biggest fit anyone has ever seen,” she said. “I just don’t know how to let out all the fear and frustration I have. It’s not the fact that we can’t go out to eat, or go to birthday parties, eat pizza, enjoy family functions; it’s the fact that these foods could kill Ty.”

Ty, a sweet guy who as a toddler could sing songs on the radio like an adult, takes it all in stride.

“He had to come home from school one day because a little girl sat on his head and it was right after lunch so there was residue on her pants and he broke out all over,” Mrs. Tumblin said. “I cried like a baby for two hours and he said ‘don’t worry mom, I got to play in the director’s office.’”

There are always complications, unseen hazards.

Just the other day she called a bakery to order vegan cupcakes for his birthday. No one answered the phone so she went on the website to see what was available. She found out the vegan cupcakes included almonds.

“I would have ordered them and not known,” she said.

Recently, another challenge rose up. Younger son Tanner is too thin. His pediatrician recommended adding to his diet cheese, mayonnaise and eggs.

“Scares me to death,” she said. “Now, I have to face losing my only safe place for Ty, our home.”

That means after each meal Tanner needs a bath, his teeth brushed, all surfaces sanitized. No kissing, no hugging between the boys.

“How do I not rob Peter to pay Paul?” she wonders.

But here’s what a loving mother says – on Valentine’s Day, by the way – to her sons:

“I love my kids more than anything in this world and whatever I have to do I know is worth it if it makes both of them happy and healthy.”

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Lyn Riddle

On overcoming obstacles, one at a time

by Lyn Riddle

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Feb
10

Laura Ashleigh Smith doesn’t remember the accident.

And perhaps she never will.

What she does know is she faces months of therapy and treatment to return to the life she once had as a student at Tri-County Technical College, a server at Brioso, a friend, sister, daughter, a driver, an athlete. To reach her dream of becoming a physical therapist.

Anyone who her knows the fact she can walk on a treadmill or balance on a beam is nothing short of a miracle.

Sometime around 3 a.m. on Dec. 10, Smith tumbled down a flight of steep, carpeted stairs, 13 steps to a wood floor. The crash alerted her roommate, who called 911 to the Clemson townhouse. Airlifted to Greenville Memorial Hospital, the then 19-year-old split open her scalp, cracked the base of her skull and bruised her brain.

Her parents, Kelli and Scott, asleep in their Easley home, didn’t hear their phones. A dispatcher at Croswell Fire Department, where Scott Smith is chief, alerted them by setting off his fire pager.

They arrived at the hospital at 6 a.m. to find their child – the oldest of three daughters –  unresponsive but breathing on her own. Over the next days, with Smith in a coma, doctors and family watched numbers. Sophisticated instruments tracked vital signs but also showed if her brain was swelling.

It was. The risk of stroke grew. Surgery offered the only hope.

Doctors said they might have to remove part of her brain. They removed a piece of skull as big as half a sheet of paper on her right side to give the swelling a place to go, but didn’t have to cut into her brain. They presented odds – 50-50 – on whether she would regain consciousness or remain in a vegetative state. There were moments when life became uncertain.

Then came an eye flicker. She opened her eyes.

And every day since has been another step toward her past life.

At first the left side of her face drooped and her previously dazzling smile became hidden behind injury. Now her smile lights up her face.

When the ventilator was removed and she could talk she said, “Where’s my phone?”

Three weeks in ICU, slightly more than a day on the brain injury floor, Smith was transferred to the Greenville Hospital System’s Roger C. Peace Rehabilitation Hospital, the only accredited brain injury rehabilitation program in South Carolina.

The hospital treated 119 patients diagnosed with traumatic brain injury last year.

Smith celebrated her 20th birthday there. On Jan. 14, she was discharged and the family was finally able to celebrate Christmas.

Smith spends most of three days a week at the Roger C. Peace Outpatient Center, which treated 171 patients with traumatic brain injury in 2010.

At the center, she works out. A star soccer player when she attended Easley High School, she has an advantage over others because she is so strong physically, said her physical therapist Elizabeth Holzbach.

Holzbach said the challenge in treating head injuries is that no two patients face the same obstacles in the aftermath.

Smith also spends time in occupational therapy. On a recent day she made a necklace – an intricate design especially for survivors.

She has trouble organizing and sometimes leaves out details needed to understand a story.

But she’s a fighter – her family says headstrong – a trait that will serve her well in the months ahead.

Doctors don’t know how far she’ll go. They’ve said it is likely there will be some lifelong limitations, but she has defied every prognosis so far. They expected an ear injury to result in moderate hearing after a couple of surgeries. She met that mark after one surgery.

She had no balance and can kick a soccer ball. But it is a struggle.

“I’m exhausted, even the smallest things. I could sleep after walking to the mailbox,” Smith said.

Asked if anything about her had changed since the accident, she said she’s afraid of stairs and she can’t get enough chocolate milk, something she never even liked before.

On Wednesday, she’ll be in surgery again, this time to replace the section of skull taken out. It’s another big step, a big one because she’ll lose the blue helmet she has worn to protect her brain.

“I’m going to give it to the lowest bidder,” she said.

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Lyn Riddle

On surviving a snowstorm

by Lyn Riddle

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Jan
21

For some it could have been the worst night imaginable.

Sleeping where you work.

Especially in a hospital.

But for Jodi Dill it turned into a pleasant evening of getting to know her co-workers better.

The snow this week heaped problems on just about everyone but when you are responsible for taking care of people there is nothing about snow – no matter how much – that can leave you stranded.

Dill and about 300 Greenville Hospital System employees spent Monday night in the hospital so there would be enough staff on duty Tuesday morning after fluffy snowfall became forbidding icepack.

Sandy Dees, a spokesperson for the hospital system, said employees slept in pre-op rooms, recovery areas and empty hospital rooms. Some dragged in air mattresses.

It was a time to dust off the planning manuals. Ambulances took some patients ready for discharge home and security officers drove employees to work.

“Patient care is a priority, and we appreciate our staff making the special effort to ensure patients receive the care they need,” said Erwin Stainback, senior administrator for perioperative and GI services at GMH.

Dill, a nursing supervisor in the Family Birthplace at Greenville Memorial Women’s Hospital (used to be just labor and delivery), lives in Greer – a 30-minute drive on back roads to the Memorial Medical Campus. She knew leaving home before daylight Monday – her shift starts at 7 a.m. – she wasn’t going to make it back that night. She packed a bag.

“Always as a nurse in the back of your mind you want to be prepared,” she said.

Others just decided to stay without provisions. So once their shift ended at 7 p.m. and they’d eaten and talked and figured out which rooms they were going to stay in there was an awful lot of swapping doing on.

“I’ve got an extra pair of socks.”

“I’ve got a tee-shirt.”

“I need soap.”

They talked some more and got into their pajamas.

“It felt funny walking around in pjs and getting snacks,” Dill said.

She said the nurses she works with are close, and the situation brought them closer as they had time to sit and share stories about their lives.

“It’s funny to see people out of their element,” she said. “What impressed me was the camaraderie of the nurses and how willing they were to stay.”

All the patients were nestled into rooms on one side of the sixth-floor unit while 10 day nurses and surgical technicians packed into rooms on the other side.

Dill and another nurse stayed in a labor and delivery room. Dill got the hospital bed, the other the sleeper sofa. They were tired. Sixteen babies were born on Monday – a bigger than normal number – as cold and snow clamped down on the region.

For Dill, a nurse for 10 years, Monday marked the first time she’d spent the night in the hospital. It gave her a new appreciation for what her patients go through.

“It’s unfamiliar,” she said. “A lot of the nurses who stayed gained empathy – being in a place that’s not home.”

Her assessment of the accommodations was they were quite comfy. She slept well. Of course, she didn’t have nurses waking her up to check her vitals. And she got to sleep later than usual. All she had to do was take a shower and walk out onto the floor.

The rest was a good thing, too.

Tuesday brought birthdays for nine young-uns, four of whom were delivered by Caesarian section.

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Lyn Riddle

On remembering

by Lyn Riddle

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Dec
3

They called her Julie. Julie Valentine.

A 6-pound, 20-inch baby with black hair.

She’d be 20 now, if she had lived.

If someone had not left her in a Sears vacuum cleaner box.

If the spot off Verdae Boulevard had not been so isolated. Left, right, then across the chain closing off an abandoned road, there she was, naked, hours from her mother’s womb.

Someone meant for her to be forgotten.

But that little girl has been anything but forgotten. She has become a symbol in Greenville County for people who spend their lives combating child abuse.  The ones nurturing the children who are slapped around and criticized, left without food or sanitation or worse – broken bones and sexual abuse.

One of those nurturers is Shauna Galloway-Williams, executive director of the Greenville Rape Crisis and Child Abuse Center on White Horse Road. She’s also a member of the Greenville Chamber of Commerce Leadership Greenville Class 37, which has adopted as one of its three community projects transforming the outside of the center.

And they’ve named the project for Julie Valentine.

“The outside of the building is scary and intimidating. We want to provide a space more like the iside, warm and serene,” Galloway-Williams said.

The $75,000 project will involve some work on the lobby, benches, landscaping, and a new sign with the center’s new name, which will be announced in February. Bob Doster, a Lancaster artist who sculpted the Julie Valentine memorial in Cleveland Park, will create a sculpture to go outside the center, Galloway-Williams said.

One of the Leadership Greenville fundraisers has been selling a special blend of coffee – the Valentine Blend – made by West End Coffee. Fifty percent of the purchase price will go to the renovation project. Leadership Greenville class members will deliver orders next week.

Last year, 625 children were treated at the center, and 450 through October this year. Most were victims of sexual abuse.

South Carolina has one of the highest rates of child abuse in the nation and Greenville County is the highest in the state.

The statistics are unsettling. A child abused every 13 seconds of every day, somewhere in this country. The only childhood disease more prevalent than child abuse is asthma – cancer, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, all less common. One in 80 children in this country have suffered some form of abuse.

And as unemployment has grown, the problem has become worse. More children have been mistreated and workers have noticed beatings and other injuries have become more severe. Galloway-Williams said another factor in the increase is authorities have become much better at recognizing abuse.

“It is not swept under the rug,” she said.

Julie Valentine wasn’t beaten, apparently. Just left. Covered in rags. Found by a man looking for wildflowers. It was the day before Valentines Day. A Tuesday. He wanted the flowers for his wife. Instead, he went home and called authorities and never gave his wife flowers again.

The autopsy showed the baby had been born alive. She had oxygen in her lungs. The week had been balmy for February – in the 60s and decomposition had begun.

Authorities thought they’d be able to find the mother. Someone must have noticed a pregnant woman who never brought a child home. Or a hospital must have treated her.

But they found nothing.

The Sears box led to an older, clearly innocent, couple.

The baby is buried in Woodlawn Memorial Park on Wade Hampton Boulevard, a grave marked with her real name – Baby Jane Doe – and the one detectives gave her underneath – Julie Valentine, named for Juliana Christy, a victims advocate, and for Valentine’s Day.

All these years later, the woman who gave birth to the baby remains unknown to authorities. But her daughter is known. Very much so.

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Lyn Riddle

On setting priorities, living in perspective

by Lyn Riddle

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Nov
15
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Ryan Fernandes and Caroline Sieger, who are getting married in December, asked guests to donate to Triune Mercy Center, where they developed a computer room.

To be honest, it was mostly junk.

Computers with parts missing or computers at least eight years old, which is like an athlete wearing a leather helmet in the Super Bowl.

The room held a few tables and some metal chairs and it was dark and dusty.

That’s what Ryan Fernandes and Caroline Sieger saw when they walked into a third floor room at Triune Mercy Center for the first time in the fall of 2009. They were Clemson grad students then, he in the business school, she in math. They had been dating about a year.

The Clemson MBA program matched Fernandes with Triune, the Rutherford Road ministry that offers services for the homeless.

“Clemson has a unique philanthropy view,” he said.

Fernandes met with Deb Richardson Moore, the pastor, and Pat Parker, the center’s associate director and employment specialist, and together they decided to take that dismal room and make it into a computer lab.

“There are cell phones faster than the computers in there,” Fernandes said. “We had to make the best of what we had.”

Their challenge was similar to a chef who is given disparate ingredients to cook something edible.

They took the oldest computers and reconfigured them for browsing the web only. They worked well enough for Triune clients to look for jobs.

They parlayed Clemson contacts into newer computers – or as Fernandes puts it “all in one machines” that could be used for typing lessons and classes in learning software such as Word or Excel.

But it didn’t end there. Fernandes and Sieger bought lighting from Ikea. His parents, Jackie and Agnelo Fernandes, who live in Greenville, donated a rug. And purple computer chairs came from the Clemson MBA program.

Fernandes and Sieger attended the first class taught there, which was in March. The clients described being able to have ready access to computers and the opportunity to take classes as life changing.

“Not knowing how to turn on a computer or have an e-mail address, I never realized how important it is,” Fernandes said. “The room serves as a safe place for them to learn without having to go to the library and be asked to leave because they fell asleep.”

Moore said so far 45 people have had one-on-one training.

“The key is that a lot of our folks have failed in other computer programs or other job-seeking programs where they’re shown to a computer and left on their own,” she said.

She said Triune offers a lot of emergency relief such as hot meals, groceries, clothes, blankets, coats and laundry services. But the computer room offers something lasting. It helps people get out of the situation they’re in.

For Fernandes, it was an opportunity to give back to the community he grew up in. He attended St. Joseph’s Catholic School, where is played soccer, and then majored in biochemistry at Clemson before getting his master’s in business. Sieger grew up in Charleston and has a bachelor’s and master’s in math.

They’re living in Boston now. She’s working for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Lab developing collision avoidance algorithms for the Air Force and the FAA, and he’s doing an internship Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Fernandes said working together on the computer lab deepened their relationship. In April, he took her to the top of the Clemson House and asked her to marry him. Their wedding is planned for Dec. 29 at Divine Redeemer Catholic Church in Hanahan, outside of Charleston.

Their wedding registry is a short one.

They’ve asked all their guests to donate what they would have spent on a wedding present to Triune Mercy Center.

“Yeah, we need things for the household, but how much do you really need when you put things in context? Fernandes said.

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Lyn Riddle

On the fifth season

by Lyn Riddle

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Nov
7

Miyonna Baker was 8 when her mother died.

She wondered who would raise her.

Her grandmother Renee Brewster reassured her. Nana would.andfinallygvl

But in the months that followed, Miyonna had trouble sleeping and wouldn’t go into the room she shared with her mother at her grandmother’s house.

She cried a lot and wanted to go where her mother went.

Her grandmother told her no, it wasn’t her time.

Brewster, who has custody of Mioynna, knew her granddaughter needed to find others who had lost a loved one. She found what she was looking for at the YMCA of Greenville’s Healing Challenge Weekend at Y Camp Greenville at Cedar Mountain, N.C.

During the weekend, families hike, climb mountains, write in journals and take part in group discussions with counselors from Radford University. Once families return home, they have support from Fifth Season, Center for Loss, Grief and Transition, a non-profit on Mills Avenue in Greenville.

It is a place where grief meets itself, mixes around with the loss of others and spreads out across the majesty of western North Carolina.

“This is to our knowledge a unique camping experience for this particular family need,” said Dusty Deming. director of marketing and public relations at the YMCA of Greenville.

The Y started the program seven years ago with special emphasis on children who had lost a loved one, but soon it became apparent the whole family needed support, Deming said.

Miyonna’s mother died in childbirth in 2001. The baby had been dead in the womb for a few days. Labor was induced and the next thing Brewster knew a Code Blue had been called and she was hurried out of the room. Before long, her 32-year-old daughter was dead.

“It was shocking,” Brewster said. Like many people, she thought dying in childbirth had been left behind on the prairie. And that created its own problem because the death was so unexpected, almost like a murder or car accident.

“Going that way is a hard thing to swallow,” Brewster said. “I thank God I was saved when my daughter died. I’m surviving by the grace of God. Thank God I didn’t crack up cause somebody had to raise Miyonna.”
Miyonna went to Camp Greenville for the first time the year after her mother died. It was comforting to find others who knew exactly how she was feeling. She was no longer the girl who was different.

“I fell in love with it,” she said.

She considers the counselors friends.

“What I like most is when we go out and talk about everything that’s happened,” she said. “We talk about the sadness and how we deal with it.”

And she met Brittany and Brooke, who have gone through similar experiences.

“At first I thought I was the only one who lost a person but I know there are others. It made me feel so good,” Miyonna said.

She talks to Brittany, who lives in Greenwood, on the phone regularly and they both go to Britanny’s grandmother’s house every now and then to spend the night. She hears from Brooke less frequently, but their bond holds true.

Now 11 and an honor roll student, Miyonna will be back at Camp Greenville next weekend. So will Brittany and Brooke.

“It’s improved her life,” said Brewster.

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Lyn Riddle

On finding new musical talent

by Lyn Riddle

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Oct
22

Among the titles Hub City Press will publish is a history of the Handlebar, a music venue in Greenville.

The place is an anomaly in many ways, not the least of which is it has been in business 16 years – an eon for such a club and especially so considering it is in Greenville. Not known as a music Mecca.

The place has a great cheeseburger and extraordinary French fries, but its soul is in the music careers it has launched or nurtured. Like Zach Brown – he was there six times before he hit it big. Sugarland. Pepper – a huge band now that when it was at the Handlebar you could put the entire audience in the stage.

“We take small unheard of or unknown bands and help turn them into somebody big,” said John Jeter, who founded the place with his brother Stephen and is writing the history.

He came to this work after an abbreviated career as a journalist. He started at the paper in Texas, went on the prestigious Columbia Journalism School for a master’s degree, then to the Chicago Sun Times and the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.

That was not a happy time professionally. He said the paper’s star system didn’t include him and he saw he would probably never get off the copy desk. Not a great place for a person who wants to dig out the news in that swashbuckling way all journalists yearn to do.

Personally, it was quite a good place for him since that’s where he met his wife Kathy Laughlin, also a journalist turned music entrepreneur. Laughlin is the president of Handlebar Enterprises, the woman who nurtures the business as Jeter searches for performers.

“She is tough, smart and determined, morally and ethically unimpeachable, unwavering standards but creates a culture that people want to work in. We have no turnover and offer benefits,” Jeter said.

He and Laughlin came to Greenville and with Stephen Jeter opened the Handlebar in Mills Mill in the summer of 1994. In the early days, they made every mistake you could make in the music business, which Jeter describes as one of the nastiest on the planet.

Nevertheless, the business grew there until a new owner came along and the club was out. They spent several months looking for another space and a business partner before they found the present location on Laurens Road.

The business didn’t find a warm welcome from nearby homeowners in the first years but when the worst didn’t happen, the residents settled down. Oh, and some moved.

“We invited neighbors into the building and said we will do everything we can to make sure we are happy,” Jeter said. “One woman said, ’we will not stop until we shut you down.’”

Jeter said the music business paradox is it is an effort to jam art and commerce into the same box.

“It’s like trying to sell matches with gasoline,” he said.

Multiple tiers of responsible people heighten the conflict, often making the artists and fans the least consequential in the mix.

“The most important element is money,” he said.

Jeter said the book will be rich with reminiscences of the artists who have touched his life. He didn’t say it but also the artists whose lives he has touched. That was apparent when Shine Down’s agent called and said the band wanted to come back. Even the biggest rock stars remember the days when it was them and the audience and they yearn for that intimacy.

Jeter, who is finishing the first chapter of the book, said it’s been harder than he thought it would be. His novel “Plunder Room,” published by St. Martin’s in 2009, was easier.

“This is 16 years of very close intimate detail,” he said, “akin to gem mining. Tons and tons of dirt and rocks to find those gems and then find the best of them.”

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Lyn Riddle

On being Benjamin Grayson

by Lyn Riddle

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Oct
11

It’s not like most of the letters legislators get.

It’s handwritten for one.

There are some cross-outs and some words that look darker than others but if legislators are smart they’ll give this one a second or third glance.

For even if they don’t agree with the letter writer they’ve got to know it’s heartfelt. Oh, and by the way, very well researched.

It’s from 10-year-old Benjamin Grayson, a Mountain View Elementary School fifth grader. He wants the tax laws changed.Benjamin Grayson

He has quite of list of his reasons. There’s the problem of the teachers who lost their jobs because sales tax revenue hasn’t made up for the cuts in property taxes the legislature approved a few years ago. That means crowded classrooms.

Teachers have a paper allowance now in Greenville County. Go over 5,000 copies and the district charges them personally. By the way, the PTA at Mountain View is already over its limit.

The health room got no money from the school district this year. So that means the nurse needs bandages and Bandaids and cups and plastic bags for ice packs and sharp bottles to dispose of needles. Oh and thermometer covers, too. My question to Ben was what does the nurse have then? And Ben said, “nothing.”

The PTA had to give her $3,500 to restock.

Ben’s research began when he brought home a box of candy to sell. His mother said he should research why this fundraising was necessary.

So he talked to his principal and the assistant principal. The nurse. Teachers. In other words, he did his own research. And he found out the answer to his question.

Budget cuts brought about by not collecting as much sales tax revenue as expected – because people aren’t buying – has impacted his life in a big way.

Ben and his mother, father and younger sister live in a neighborhood in the northern reaches of Greenville County beside Lake Robinson. It’s a beautiful home on a hill and the site of Ben’s planning.

When he spreads out his research papers they cover the dining room table. In pencil, he’s carefully recorded his questions and the answers on legal pads. He’s printed out facts and figures.

And now he’s shopping his information around. He’s delivered letters to a few legislators with the plan to send out many more. He’s met with former U.S. Education Secretary Dick Riley and state Education chief Jim Rex. Banker Art Seaver took a meeting with Ben and ended up buying 40 candy bars.

Ben sold the candy bars in downtown Greenville and at the movie theater. He certainly did his part – $650 worth.

Years ago, when my children were in public school, fundraising was a huge deal, too. I don’t know how many rolls of Sally Foster I’ve bought in my lifetime.

But Ben’s mom Joy says there’s a big difference now.

“It is more desperate. It used to be gravy,” she said.

This money goes for essentials. Her daughter’s third grade class raised money to buy math textbooks. Some teachers use half a page for homework, squeezing in the type like the sort of stuff you see on the bottom of contracts. The fine print.

But none of this is lost on Ben.

Asked what he thinks of the decisions the grown ups have made that so directly affect his life, he said, “I’m surprised they would make a law that requires the schools get money from sales tax. They should pay for most of the supplies for the schools.”

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