Courtney Tollison

The view of July 4 from afar

by Courtney Tollison

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Jul
1

I am in the midst of a three-week journey throughout northern India. I am with nine other professors from liberal arts colleges across the United States and we are visiting sites of religious, cultural, and historical significance.

The objective of the program sponsored by ASIANetwork and funded by the Mellon Foundation is for us to incorporate what we learn and experience into our classrooms. I am currently in Varanasi, the city along the River Ganges.

I am very far from home, but am constantly making connections with upcountry South Carolina.

Varanasi is in the northeastern part of India, and is the closest our group will be to Shamshernagar, a town which hosted an American and British air base during World War II.

As part of the Upcountry History Museum’s World War II Oral History Project, my students and I interviewed Greenville native Harold Gallivan, who was stationed at Shamshernagar during the war. From the base, he flew the C-109, which was essentially a B-24 that had been converted to haul nearly 3,000 gallons of high-octane aviation gasoline.

The plane became known as the “C- one oh boom” because of the spectacular explosion that would occur upon crash landing. He and other Allied pilots and crew were here to fly high altitude aerial supply missions over the Himalayan Mountains (an often perilous endeavor they called “flying the Hump”) to deliver fuel into China to thwart the westward expansion of the Japanese. Their efforts in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II are some of the most under recognized of the war.

During my travels, I am also mindful that, at home, the Fourth of July is approaching. Last week, a historian at a university in Delhi said to our group, “You Americans were smart to throw off the British when you did.”

Others have said to us, “you got rid of the British and then they came over here to bother us!” The historian in me cringes a bit at this chronology and oversimplification but the point of these statements is clear.

India gained independence from Great Britain in 1947, during an era of post-World War II decolonization. Many of the former European colonial powerhouses simply could not manage to rebuild their infrastructure and economies in the aftermath of the war and maintain their colonies abroad. Furthermore, the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi, widely considered the father of independent India, and others cannot be underestimated.

In India, the influence of the former colonial presence remains.

In the US, we are much further removed from this phase of our history. We tend, and especially in South Carolina, to focus more on the Civil War, a conflict that fractured our country less than a century after we gained independence.

We all know that the opening shots of the Civil War were fired off the coast of our state. Less known, however, is the fact that many conflicts from the American Revolution were fought in South Carolina. Several of those sites have been preserved and are maintained by the National Park Service.

Within a two hour’s drive from Greenville are Kings Mountain and Cowpens, two important battles of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution.

Throughout the colonies, British General Charles Cornwallis tried aggressively to recruit loyalists to the British crown; his efforts were challenged by Rev. Richard Furman, who traveled throughout South Carolina and the South recruiting patriots. Furman, for whom Furman University is named, was eloquent and successful in his efforts, and allegedly Cornwallis placed a price of one thousand pounds on Furman’s head.

British loyalists were defeated at King’s Mountain, and months later, some of Cornwallis’ troops were defeated at Cowpens. Soon thereafter, Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington near Yorktown. In 1782, he returned to England as part of an exchange for Henry Laurens, for whom Laurens County is named.

Four years later, Cornwallis received another extremely significant appointment from King George III. He was named Governor General of India, where for the next several years he proceeded to “bother” others who would remain firmly entrenched in the vast British Empire long after the American Revolution.

Cornwallis’ legacy in India and throughout the empire is extensive, and includes a Hindu college he founded in 1791 here in Varanasi.

Travelling throughout India has certainly provided new perspective, not only on the fact that American patriots declared our independence 235 years ago, but that veterans such as Harold Gallivan and so many others have and continue to travel to the far corners of the world to maintain it.

Happy Fourth of July!

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Lyn Riddle

On being a father

by Lyn Riddle

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Jun
23

There were inflatable bouncy houses and a magician.

A guy handling all sorts of exotic animals like a hissing cockroach and an albino python.

Lots of kids, too, at this celebration the day before father’s day in Greenville.

Not as many dads, though.

But it’s a start, a new initiative to bring absent dads back into the lives of their children, sponsored by the Greenville Housing Authority.

About 250 people showed. It had an almost circus-like quality with bbq and kids laughing and grandma hazing the magician.

The underside was the serious business of kids without dads.

A representative of the Upstate Fathers Coalition was there to explain what the organization could do as a mediator between Family Court and a dad behind on child support payments.

Also on hand at Westview Homes were folks from Job Corps, Greenville Mental Health, Kool Smiles Pediatric Dentistry, and The Greenville Workforce Investment Board / Personal Pathways To Success.

“We want to remove any barrier as to why a father is absent,” said Nyroba B. Leamon, the REACH Youth Coordinator and Case Manager for the housing authority.

Leamon used to work as a cop in Spartanburg. He worked in Greenville County’s  alternative school. He’s the founder of Today’s Antioch Fellowship in Greer.

The one constant through what he calls his journeyman career is working with kids.

And at the housing authority, he says, one of the biggest problems for kids is many – no most – don’t have their dad around.

“Mothers are doing an excellent job,” he said. “But the reality is for a young man and a young woman there are some things only a father can teach.”

And not having that influence – and feeling unloved or unwanted – manifests itself in so many ways – poor grades, low self esteem, getting in trouble.

He said he asked a 16-year-old girl who lives in one of the Housing Authority units if her dad was coming to the father’s day event. She said no. He didn’t care about her. Every time she reaches out to him, he rebuffs her.

“You could hear the pain in her voice,” Leamon said.

The girl is an OK student, but could be a great student if she didn’t have to spend time thinking her dad didn’t love her.

His role, Leamon said, is to encourage her to keep reaching out, which will allow him and a vast support system to reach the father.

Leamon grew up in a housing project, as did his wife. But they benefited from both of their parents being in the home, he said.

Leamon believes the vast majority of absentee father chose that route not because they don’t care but because of life circumstances: a dead-end job that doesn’t cover his bills, back child support he cannot pay that could bring arrest at any moment, bad parenting that causes a man think it’s not his responsibility to raise a child, drugs.

A society of greed and prosperity creates in some people the desire to make the quick buck by selling drugs instead of working a legitimate eight-hour day.

“I’m not excusing it, but drugs is a status,” he said. “There are many who have sequenced from selling drugs.”

A new and better life begins with education. And days like last Saturday, when the mid-day heat beat down on government housing in Greenville, South Carolina, and kids laughed and giggled in the arms of their daddys.

“It starts with a change of the mind,” Leamon said. “How we think about things determines how we act.”

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Lyn Riddle

Remembering Max Heller

by Lyn Riddle

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Jun
19

The day I met Max Heller – 30-something years ago – is one I recount to almost every journalism class I teach at Furman University.

It was a defining moment in my career.

I was not long out of college, working for the now-defunct Greenville Piedmont, the gutsy afternoon paper that competed fiercely with its sister The Greenville News.

Assigned to cover Greenville city government, I trooped across Main Street for a meeting with the mayor, Max Heller. His top-floor City Hall office overlooked a dying Main Street.

Store by store, retailers chose to flee downtown in search of the promise of the 1970s mall frenzy. Few treetops were apparent. Main Street was four lanes.

The mayor told me his story of coming to America, one step ahead of the Nazis thanks to a Greenville woman who arranged for someone to sponsor him. I don’t remember the exact amount but I know he had a few dollars in his pocket. And he had a work ethic as strong and straight as Palmetto tree.

He swept floors at Piedmont Shirt Co. He didn’t say this but it was apparent in his demeanor and language. In Austria, his family was prosperous. They owned a company. He was a member of a private gym, where he was a champion wrestler. And in America, he swept floors.

He pressed on, became general manager at Piedmont, co-founded another shirt company, sold his interest then founded his own shirt company. Max always had nice shirts.

Decades passed and he sold the company to dedicate his life to public service. Elected to City Council in 1969, he ran for mayor and began his term in 1971.

He’d been in office six years when I met him. He had a vision for downtown that made me think he was Greenville’s own Walt Disney. At that point, the vision had not taken root, but I knew it would and I was grateful to be watching. I knew it would be a fun ride.

At the end of the interview – Max actually spent more time asking about me than telling his story – he walked me to the door. The words he spoke then are what I tell my Furman students.

He said, “I want you to know, everything I tell you will be true, but everything that is true I won’t tell you.”

I responded, “And, Mayor, it’s that last part I’m going to be trying to find out.”

He said, “Fair enough.”

That, in the most succinct form, describes the relationship between a journalist and a source. The “fair enough” belief, though, comes from so few people in public life these days.

But Max Heller understood the value of a free press. He also knew how to be a leader, how to inspire others.

I am sure he was not happy when I broke the news that the Hyatt Corp. was going to build a hotel on Main Street and that it would be the centerpiece of a renewed downtown. Or the other stories that followed about Main Street such as giving voice to the people who thought narrowing the street to two lanes folly.

But he never said.

It was never boring covering Max Heller.

And when he left office, I was not too far behind in asking for another beat.

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Lyn Riddle

On remembering, and moving on

by Lyn Riddle

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Jun
6

On a day when a $100 million project was announced for a Main Street tract that proved pivotal in the life of Leola Robinson-Simpson, she was working away at her desk at Greenville Technical College.

The site once held a Woolworth five and dime, where Robinson-Simpson and dozens of other teens staged a sit-in almost every week for two and a half years. They didn’t want to sit at the crowded Negro lunch counter in the back of the store any more.

Many of Robinson-Simpson’s fellow protestors attended Wednesday’s announcement that an eight-story retail-office tower would be built there. But Robinson-Simpson preferred to stay away.

“Main Street got a piece of me, 100 pounds of flesh when I was at a tender age,” she said. “I’ve done my part.”

She holds those memories close, all these many years later.

Greenville’s Main Street in the 1960s was a busy place – movie theaters, hotels, all manner of retailers, banks. And it was a place of division. White and black water fountains, entrances, waiting rooms. The public pool was closed to blacks as was the library. At Kress, a block from Woolworth’s, black patrons had to take their meals from a side door.

The first sit-in at Woolworth’s came in the spring of 1960. Robinson-Simpson was there. She and the others sat quietly at the white’s only counter in the front of the store until asked to leave. They returned the next week and the next.

“Once the statement was made, we left,” she said.

In time, when it became obvious their statement was not being heard, they waited until the police were called. Robinson-Simpson was 15 the first time she was arrested. She spent a week in youth detention.

As a youth leader for the NAACP, she traveled the state and was arrested protesting at the State House in Columbia, in Rock Hill, Raleigh, twice more in Greenville.

The arrests weren’t working so they appealed to the City Council. It was after Robinson-Simpson left for college, first in North Carolina, then in New York, that the lunch counter was integrated. It took white business leaders sitting down with the civil rights leaders to make it happen.

“We had no doubt change was going to come,” Robinson-Simpson said. “We felt this was the time and we went forward.”

She went on to work as a floor clerk at New York Hospital, then set up tutoring programs at the Greenville Urban League and Greenville Tech. In 1996 she was elected to the Greenville County School Board, where she’s served as a voice for all children who in some manner might not have as big a voice as others.

This is her last term on the board.

“It’s healthy to pass the mantle,” she said. “There’s one young lady I’m trying to push into running.”

Robinson-Simpson never believed the Woolworth’s property should be left as some sort of shrine. The store had been empty from the mid-1990s until it was torn down last year, and had become dilapidated.

“We don’t want to stand in the way of progress,” she said.

What matters is that the statue paying tribute to Sterling High School, which served the African American population until it burned down in the 1970, remains at the corner of Washington and Main. On Wednesday, Mayor Knox White told the crowd the site was sacred for the African American community and, to loud applause, said the statue would not be moved.

Robinson-Simpson believes Greenville would never have emerged from its small-town textile cocoon without the civil rights movement and the changes it brought. The Sterling statue is there for everyone who wants to acknowledge how far the community has come in the past 50 years.

“We need to preserve the markers of who we are and the growth that’s taken place,” she said. “It keeps us grounded.”

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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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Charles Sowell

Ever seen Bill Kimball?

by Charles Sowell

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Jan
21

Don’t mess with Bill Kimball when it’s cold; you’ll likely get an icy reception.

No matter how you slice the Coldspring Branch/Bill Kimball loop trail it is murderous and recommended for experienced hikers. But it is a cobweb cleaner for those who want something more challenging than just a walk in the woods.

The biggest photo op on this roughly five-mile loop trail is a massive rock formation known as El Lieutenant, named for its resemblance to El Capitan at Yosemite National Park.

The Coldspring Branch Trail starts in the Raven Cliff parking lot on U.S. 276, about a mile north of Caesars Head State Park.

Start early on a clear winter day and you’ll likely see the Shining Rock Ridge and Mount Pisgah glowing in the early morning sun from the trail. If you’re lucky that 6,000-foot ridgeline will be glowing pink with a fresh coat of snow.

Coldspring Branch starts on the south end of the parking lot at a kiosk with trail information and signup cards. The trail uses orange blazes.

Day hikers are required to fill out the card, put the white copy in the box. When the trip is done hikers must deposit the pink copy that they carry with them on the trail.

It seems like a lot of trouble, but considering the remoteness of the trails at the upper end of Jones Gap and the level of difficulty it can be a lifesaver.

It’s about a half mile from the parking lot to the junction with the Bill Kimball Trail (pink blazes) and this is the first real decision hikers face.

Continue on Coldspring and it is a moderate 2-mile descent to the intersection with Bill Kimball and a murderous 1,000-foot ascent back to the junction. Most of that 1,000 foot elevation gain comes in a few tenths of a mile.

Either way, Bill Kimball is the road less traveled. Most hikers on Coldspring Branch stay on that orange-blaze trail and hook up with the Jones Gap Trail at the Middle Saluda River.

This adds about 1.5 miles to the loop, but it is far less strenuous than Bill Kimball.

On this day it was the road less traveled, first.

From the junction Bill Kimball climbs moderately for about a half mile to a high point with spectacular views of the northern side of the Middle Saluda Valley.

After that, like a freight train beginning a run through a mountain pass, hikers begin an ever increasingly steep descent to the base of El Lieutenant.

When it’s cold this is where the first signs of trouble on the trail become apparent.

Entering into a dense laurel and rhododendron thicket the ground is frozen as hard as concrete. It rings hollow underfoot. Then the first seeping rock outcrop appears covered in a six-inch sheet of ice.

Normally, these seeps are not a problem for through hikers since they seldom produce enough moisture to form more than a damp spot on the trail.

After scrambling down through a quarter mile of thicket, in one spot Jones Gap officials have strung a chain handhold to keep hikers from falling, you come to the base of El Lieutenant.

And here is where Bill Kimball gets his revenge on unwary hikers.

Normally this section of trail is dry. The seeps high on the side of the rock face mostly evaporate before they reach this rocky ledge.

In cold weather they form great sheets of ice that break off in the slightly warmer daytime temperatures out on the rock.

Those sheets of ice tumble down to the trail and pile up like broken dishes, effectively blocking the trail.

Nothing to do but have lunch and listen to the croaking of ravens high above; then starts the murderous 500-foot climb back up.

At the top a crow-sized pileated woodpecker drums on a branch as he hunts for his supper in a decaying hardwood. Lunch for him, but not for the ravens, at least not today.

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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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