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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
ryanfernandesweb

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 giving teachers what they need

by Lyn Riddle

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Sep
20

South Carolina’s teacher of the year gave a speech not long ago to a group of community and business leaders in Greenville.

She talked about lifelong learning and what that has meant in her life and in the lives of the students she has taught Spanish at Fork Shoal Elementary.

It’s an important goal, of course, one that has been embraced by the Vision 2025 committee and Greenville Forward. To make Greenville a community that values learning not just education.

But something beyond the worthy goal stuck out for me in Kelly Nalley’s speech. People. She mentioned Jared, Sonya, Mr. Middleton and Sean.

Jared has a learning disability that makes reading difficult. And he assumed he’d have the same problems with Spanish, But Nalley realized he needed encouragement and brought him through to the point he spent time in Costa Rica and taught himself a Guatemalan language.

Sonya, a girl from a dying mill town, convinced Nalley she should be a teacher. After a talk on self-esteem, making good choices, personal responsibility, Nalley and the children posed for a picture. When Nalley saw it, she was overcome by the expression on the child’s face. She was beaming at Nalley, causing her to realize the impact a teacher has on lives.

Mr. Middleton was a dynamic teacher whose confidence in students inspired her to learn.

And Sean, with multiple disabilities including a severe emotional disability, is in a self-contained special education class. But he is learning to speak, read and write Spanish and frequently does better than children not in special ed.

Most every one of us can name a teacher or two who inspired us, who helped make us the people we eventually became.

Mine was Mrs. B – Beverly Berzinski – an English teacher at Glenbrook South High School in Glenview, Ill. I wasn’t a bad student but not the most motivated one either in a high-achieving school, but Mrs. B. saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. She believed I could be a journalist.

She believed so much she took a story I wrote for class to the local newspaper – the Glenview Announcements – and they accepted it. It was my first byline. I was 16.

And another English teacher Judy Means encouraged me in creative writing – a dream that all but died out until last year when I went back to school to get an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in fiction at Converse College.

I think, too, about the teachers who encouraged my three children – at Bethel Elementary and Hillcrest Middle, J.L. Mann and the Fine Arts Center. The journey continues with my little grandson Reid starting this week at Sterling School.

Teaching, it seems to me, has to be one of the most frustrating, heartbreaking, joyous, uplifting of all jobs. Imagine being able to touch so many lives. To help children find their way. Their way. Not the way of the parents who come into this thing called parenthood with certain preconceived notions – some more than others – about what this child will become.

The teacher greets the child where he is. And lifts from there.

I’m not trying to paint an unrealistic picture that every teacher is exceptional. I could name a few right off who didn’t do much for me or my children.

But for those who did, wouldn’t it be great to sit down tonight and write a note to say thanks? Perhaps Facebook could be good for something.

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Lyn Riddle

On being an Oprah fan

by Lyn Riddle

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Sep
17

Most days when Markylena Tolbert-Wydman leaves her job as a counselor at the Cancer Centers of the Carolinas, she says, “I’ll see you tomorrow unless Oprah calls.”

She Tivos the show every day and watches with her husband.

Winfrey has inspired her to do community service.

She is an Ultimate Fan.

Officially.

Tolbert-Wydman and her friend and co-worker Amy Dodds were among the 300 Ultimate Fans who attended the taping of Oprah’s final season premiere, which aired Monday. These are the folks who will spend 10 days in Australia with Oprah in December.

A couple of months ago, Dodds was home from work and watched the show. She heard that Winfrey was looking for her ultimate fans. Dodds decided to write about her friend and what Oprah has meant to her through the years.

Oprah has inspired Tolbert-Wydman, especially to do things for others, including early reading programs, serving at the Community Food Bank and as an election commissioner. Tolbert-Wydman is also a lay speaker for the Methodist Church.

Dodds dashed off an e-mail and then someone from the show called. They seemed interested because Dodds was writing on behalf of a friend, not herself.

They asked what Tolbert-Wyndham would do if she were selected.

“She would flip out and she did,” said Dodds.

Once Dodds got the official call inviting her and Tolbert-Wydman to the show, she called a meeting at work.

“You know how you always say if Oprah calls,” Dodds told her friend. “Well Oprah called.”

“I did my hallelujah dance,” Tolbert-Wydman said. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”

When they arrived at the show on Sept. 9, they thought it was just a regular show, but in talking to others they got the idea these were the ultimate fans.

“People were so nice, so friendly I said it’s like we were in the South,” Tolbert-Wydman said.

She said she was stunned when she saw her hero walk onto the stage.

“I felt my spirit lift out of my body and it was floating in the air,” Tolbert-Wydman said.

Toward the end of the show, Winfrey brought up the idea of a trip. Philadelphia or New York, perhaps. Los Angeles. But then she said this was her last season and she needed to do something bigger.

“So I started to think about where would I most want to go,” Winfrey said. “Maybe I should take you all with me to the other side of the world.”

The audience members started screaming. Some cried.

“We’re going to Australia,” Winfrey shouted.

Dodds said she and Tolbert-Wydman screamed so much they lost their voices.

“We just got our voices back a couple of days ago,” Tolbert-Wydman said.

And then they came home and couldn’t tell anybody anything until the show aired on Monday.

“My husband said ‘you can tell me. I’m your husband.’ It was very hard to keep a secret like that,” Dodds said.

Reuters reported that the $2.8 million cost of the trip would be paid by the federal and state New South Wales governments to boost tourism.

Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson told the wire service it’s worth it. Some 40 million Americans watch the show.

Winfrey – Dodds and Tolbert-Wyndman ­in tow – will be in Australia for eight days and seven nights. At least two episodes of Winfrey’s show will be taped, including one on Dec. 14 at the Sydney Opera House.

Tolbert-Wydman said she hasn’t actually met Winfrey but understands they’ll be spending a lot of time with her on the trip.

Asked whether she intends to slip Winfrey her resume, Tolbert-Wydman said, “I will not but if the good Lord wills that then OK.”

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Lyn Riddle

On building dreams, with more than just pedal power

by Lyn Riddle

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Aug
5

Make no mistake, it was a hot Thursday afternoon.

Pretty near 100 in the feel-like category despite the early evening shadows that filled some of what was once a railroad track bed.

Eight middle school age children, four adults setting out on a journey of 20 miles.

On bicycles.

The Greenville Hospital System Swamp Rabbit Trail was their guide. They left before 7 p.m. from Linky Stone Park in downtown Greenville.

It wasn’t long before some of the girls started struggling physically.

“My legs are burning.”

“My knees hurt.”

“I feel like a loser because I’m in the back.”

David Taylor, one of the adults, shot right back, “I knew when I met you you were a great person. This isn’t a race. You’re going to get through it.”

Pedals whirred. The miles passed.

Along the way, walkers and joggers shouted encouragement.

They asked about the group.

It was the Building Dreams Bike Club, the walkers were told.

What wasn’t said was one child had been in a Department of Juvenile Justice facility. The fathers of some were in prison. All lived in homes where their mother was the only parent.

The bikes they rode were paid for with funds raised by the Furman University Diversity Institute, a statewide program to jump start the conversation among community leaders about the issues that separate us – the differences in cultural background, language, gender, physical ability.

Great Escape offered good deals and support for what would have been $400 bikes to anyone else. Trek Navigators 1.0. Taylor bought one for himself.

The Sterling Center selected the kids. The group has been meeting since early summer.

St. Frances Hospital sent folks to talk about wellness and exercise. A community cop who rides a bike for work described the rules of the road for bikes.

Clemson University’s Building Dreams program facilitated it all.

And Greenville Spinners bike club educated them on bike safety and led the Thursday ride and several others as well.

When the group eased into Travelers Rest, they stopped at the convenience store across from Sunrift Adventures.

“We just rode 10 miles,” Taylor called out.

“We don’t get this far in our car,” one child said.

And there it was, the underlying reason for this and so many wonderful programs for children who don’t have all the benefits life can offer.

Raising aspirations. Showing the children worlds beyond their own. Building dreams, which by the way, is the name of Taylor’s program, a part of Clemson’s Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life. Building Dreams works with children with at least one parent in prison.

“This gave them the opportunity to explore, to take off and be exuberant,” Taylor said.

Once the summer’s over, a ceremony will be held to give the children the bicycles to take home. This fall, they’re going to do a service project of some sort, perhaps raise money for cancer research. To give back to the community. To do something for others.

It took them about two and a half hours to complete the ride to TR and back to Greenville. Everyone made it.

“It was wonderful seeing the joy on their faces when they actually did it,” Taylor said.

Bikes loaded back up, children driven home.

And one child asked, enthusiasm fully in gear, “Where are we going next?”

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Lyn Riddle

On finding a family

by Lyn Riddle

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Jul
30

One by one, they walked up the hill to the white clapboard church they knew so well.

And in their own way, they felt the same as the man who said, “If it wasn’t for this place, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me.”

The event was the Miracle Hill Children’s Home Reunion, which takes place every two, then every three years. Former residents – young adults to almost retired – come back to the 130 acres in Pumpkintown in Pickens County to see many of the people who took them in when no one else wanted them.

Sharon Tiano arrived in 1964 when she was 12 with her 11-year-old sister and 8-year-old brother. Her mother told them they were going shopping for school clothes.

“We ate lunch, went down to the office and the man said ‘are they staying’ and she said we were,” Tiano said.

Then her mother, grandmother and aunt, drove down the hill.

“Sometimes you don’t get over it,” Tiano said. “I regret how she did it, but it was the best thing.”

Miracle Hill got its name while the first building was being constructed in 1958. The walls were up, but the roof wasn’t. And the folks prayed that a storm passing through would spare their work. It rained everywhere but on that building, they said.

Then, dormitories housed the children, the children of abuse, neglect. Troubled and unwanted, they found solace and a home with dorm parents like Miss Pat, who seemed to know a little something about everyone who walked into the chapel.

“I had her as a dorm parent when she was 7 and now she’s a grandparent,” she whispered as a woman walked in.

The former residents were asked to talk about what they remember.

“When I came to Miracle Hill I moved up in life,” said a man who lived there for 10 years and for the longest time sat on the steps on Friday afternoons waiting for parents who never came back.

“Everything we have learned we have taught our children. It goes on for generations,” one woman said.

“I came here at six months,” another man said. “I learned the value of hard work and the love of country and God.”

Reid Lehman, the president of Miracle Hill Ministries, which includes the Rescue Mission in Greenville and a number of other shelters, grew up on the property because his father was the director. He said the best part of growing up there was he met his wife.

Today, 40 boys and girls live in what are now cottages straddling the Oolenoy River. Another 45 – 38 younger that 6 – live with foster families.

Lehman said the philosophy in its simplest term could be described as effective parenting. The longer, more complicated version, is they use a matrix developed by Cornell University that relies on rewards and expectations rather than punishment and criticism.

He said it is not uncommon for people to leave the protected and prim world of Miracle Hill and veer off for a bit. It’s a disappointing part of the work, but through the years he has seen the same phenomenon happen again and again.

Former residents remember where they came from. One man said he got locked up not long after he left and sitting in jail thought of the lessons he’d learned.

“I’ve never been in jail again,” he said.

Tiano had her struggles, but raised three daughters, largely on her own, held a job and cared for her mother in the last years of her life. Now she’s 58, a barber in a shop where politicians tend to gather in Goose Creek. She’s remarried ­– two years to a man who brought his youth group from their church to work at Miracle Hill for a week before the reunion.

Tiano teared up thinking back on her life, and stood proudly as she pointed down the hill toward the small cemetery.

“This is home. My wish is to be buried right down in that cemetery,” she said.

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