BLYTHEWOOD – Another year and another Blythewood Dixie Youth team will be representing the town in The Dixie Youth World Series. This time it will be The Machine Pitch All-Stars headed to Cleveland, Mississippi for the World Series from July 28 through Aug.1. This tops off their first ever state title in a close 5-3 contest against Lexington.
Last year, the Blythewood Dixie Youth Minor’s team not only won the district tournament, which was held in Blythewood, but claimed the State Championship and brought home a third-place finish in the Dixie Youth World Series.
The All-Stars dismantled the competition enroute to their World Series appearance. They began by routing Summerville, 11-1, and followed that victory with a dominant 9-2 win over Central.
The team solidified their streak of blowout wins by downing Delmar, 17-5, Gaffney, 12-0, and Bluttfon,15-6. The team will get their first taste of action on July 28 when they take on Alabama at 2:30 p.m., and their second game will be against Cleveland at 5:30 p.m.
Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church of Ridgeway will hold its Annual Summer Revival beginning on Sunday, August 20, 2017. The Sunday morning speaker is Pastor James Wilson, Sunday afternoon at 2:30 the speaker will be Rev. Timothy Cousar, and the Revivalist for the week, Monday -Thursday at 7 p.m. will be Rev. Stanley Ladson. The church is located at 2092 Longtown Road in Ridgeway.
BLYTHEWOOD – For those students who haven’t yet stocked up on school supplies, drop by the Farmers Market in Doko Park next Wednesday.
The Blythewood Area Ministers Association (BAMA) will sponsor their annual Back to School Supplies Give-Away at the market on Wednesday, Aug. 2 from 4 – 7 p.m. The market is located in Doko Park.
Free school supplies will be given to the first 200 elementary students that visit the market, said Rhett Sanders, BAMA secretary and pastor of Blythewood Presbyterian Church that meets in Blythewood High School.
Churches participating in the event are Blythewood Presbyterian, Calvary Baptist, Cedar Creek Baptist, Covenant Worship Center, New Kirk Presbyterian, Pine View Baptist, Sandy Level Baptist and Saint Marks Lutheran.
“The mission of BAMA is to support and encourage biblical diversity and unity within the context of the association’s leadership, ministerial relationships and community ministries,” Sanders said.
“BAMA is for all pastors in the Blythewood area to come together in a fellowship of genuine Christ-Centered friendship and encouragement,” he said.
For more information, contact their at Sanders rhett@blythewoodpres.com.
Mrs. Katherine Knotts Craig, 62, of Winnsboro passed away on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. Born in Fairfield County, she was the daughter of the late Author and Elaine Knotts, Jr.
Katherine is survived by her husband of 39 years, Billy Ray Craig; two sisters, Melody K. Branham, and Debra K. Reynolds (Joey); uncle, Ed Knotts; nephew, Stephen Davis (Suzie); niece, Amy Bibb (Beau); great nephews, Ryan Davis and Corey Davis; and great niece, Cadence Bibb.
In addition to her parents, Katherine is predeceased by three brothers, Bud Knotts, Dennis Knotts, and Johnny Branham.
Graveside services will be held on Friday, July 21, 2017 at 11:00 am at Fairfield Memorial Cemetery. The family will receive friends at the home of Melody Branham.
Pope Funeral Home is assisting the Craig family.
Online condolences can be sent to the Craig family at www.popefuneralhomesc.com.
Mary Ella Mason celebrated her 95th birthday party in her home on June 23, with many family and friends. She has a sister who lives in Connecticut. While in her 20’s, Mason moved to New York state where she spent 30 years working for a family. Then it was back to South Carolina where she is known as Mimi to her dear ones.
Mr. & Mrs. Brent Kerr of Jonesville, SC are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter,
Cheyenne Leigh Kerr to James Brandon Edwards Son of Douglas M. Edwards Jr. and Helen Edwards
Of Winnsboro, SC.
Miss Kerr, 21, is a 2014 graduate of Broome High School who received her Associates Degree in early Childhood Education from Spartanburg Community College in 2017. A resident of Jonesville, Miss. Kerr is employed as a Teacher’s Assistant at the Mon-Aetna Child Enrichment Center. She is a member of Jonesville Volunteer Fire Department and the Lebanon Volunteer Fire Department.
Mr. Edwards, 24, is a graduate of Blythewood High School and holds an Associate Degree in Fire Science Technology from Greenville Technical College. A resident of Winnsboro, Mr. Edwards is employed as a Firefighter with Cayce Department of Public Safety. He is also a member of Fairfield County Rescue Squad and Lebanon Volunteer Fire Department.
The wedding with be held September 9, 2017 at Winnsboro Church of the Nazarene.
WINNSBORO – Even if you have seen multiple versions of “Snow White,” the Pine Tree Playhouse’s presentation of the classic fairy tale will still give you a new experience.
For one thing, the dwarves have different names: Gabby (who talks a lot); Snore (who likes to sleep); Ticklish (who likes to laugh). “The dwarves are a little different; as with any adaptation, you have to change some things up a little bit,” Dee Pullen, one of the directors of the play, said.
And, there are girl dwarves, cats, a fox and music. There is still Snow White, of course, an apple, a wicked queen, a huntsman and a prince.
What you will also see is a young cast, drawn from kids and teens in the Fairfield County and Blythewood areas, excited about being on stage and learning theater craft.
This is only the second time Pullen has directed a summer children’s play, although as a teacher by training, she has lots of experience working with young children. Pullen started with playhouse six years ago and has learned as she went along. In getting a play to production, everybody in the theater just pitches in to help, she said.
“We are a really close-knit family as far as the board and the people in the theater go,” Pullen said.
The director typically choses which play to present, Pullen said, and the playhouse likes to do a musical in the summer because it draws a good crowd, and the children’s plays bring in the biggest audiences. “We have a good group of kids that keep coming back year after year. My own kids have done the children’s plays for about six years now. For the past couple of years we have had a new influx of kids. But kids do age out – they can audition for the children’s plays up to age 17 or 18.”
What are some of the challenges in working in community theater?
“Especially with a children’s play in the summer time, it’s a big commitment.” Pullen said. “We practice two to three days a week and two to three hours a day in the evening. We are board members who also direct and we have full time jobs.”
It’s hard for parents to find the time to bring the children, and with different summer schedules, she said, last Monday was the first time she had her full cast together even though they have been practicing for this play since the first of May.
“It makes for a big challenge but it always pulls together,” Pullen said.
The 88-seat Pine Tree Playhouse started in 1972 and produces about five plays a year, totally with volunteer talent for all aspects of the production, from directing to costume making. The theater is always seeking new blood and is asking anyone with an interest in community theatre to come by. As Dee and her kids demonstrate, this can be a truly family project. Not only are her daughters in the play but her son is in charge of sound effects.
“Snow White” is directed by Dee Pullen and Dori Brandenburg. Performances are at 8 p.m., Friday, July 21, Saturday, July 22 and at 3 p.m., Sunday 22. Tickets are $10. The theater is located at 230 S. Congress Street in Winnsboro. For information, call 635-6847.
BLYTHEWOOD- The Blythewood Planning Commission unanimously rejected a proposed zoning amendment that would have relaxed design standards for new businesses fronting Blythewood Road East of I-77. The proposed amendment would have eased setback restrictions, allowing new buildings to set back from the road as far as 25 feet and install drive through lanes and parking spaces between the building and the sidewalk.
The amendment flies in the face of Blythewood’s 2005 Master Plan that tightened setback limitations to 6-12 feet from the road right away for new builds. It was intended to create a traditional look for the Town Center, giving it an old-town feeling.
“I feel like if you make an exception to one and then another, you might as well scrap the whole plan,” Commissioner Donald Brock said. “And you’re essentially letting businesses tell you what they want to do come in versus you telling them what they need to do to come in.”
Paul Moscati, a former Blythewood councilman who worked on the original Master Plan, was on hand during the July 21 meeting to share the process that went into the plan’s development.
“The decisions I, Mr. McLean and others made on council probably won’t bear fruit for another 30, 40, 50 years,” Moscati said. “We talked about that we don’t want Blythewood road to look like Two Notch Road. We don’t want it to look like Killian Road. We wanted to make this a livable community.”
Blythewood Chamber of Commerce Chair, Belinda Portnal, who is also employed by BB&T Mortgage that recently sold the property for a reported $1 million, spoke in opposition to Moscati, stressing that if the Master Plan has not been effective in drawing businesses it may be time for a change.
“I don’t want this to look like Killian Road at all, that’s why I live in Blythewood. But by the same token I don’t like the way it looks now. Kinda looks a little poverty ridden,” Portnal said. “The Master Plan, if it’s not doing what it needs to, you say let’s give it some time. I think we’ve given a lot of time and clearly the businesses aren’t coming.”
“But if we don’t like the way it looks now, why would we pass a zoning ordinance that would allow it to continue to look this way,” Commissioner Michelle Kiedrowski asked Portnal.
Talks of tweaking the Master Plan come just seven months after Portnal’s company, BB&T sold the property across from the Waffle House, that is now being rumored to be a site for a Taco Bell. Portnal cited the current ordinance as the reason BB&T did not move forward with development.
“I’m with BB&T, as you know we owned that lot there on Blythewood road for a long time and we never built and the current ordinances kind of speak for themselves as to why we didn’t build,” Portnal said.
Both Moscati and Commissioner Cynthia Schull said they suspect that the sudden hurry to develop the property for the fast food restaurant may be the catalyst for the amendment.
“We all know the rush, it’s the developers’ rush, the developer controls this part of the process. There’s that little piece of Blythewood Road,” Moscati said. “It’s up to all of us who live in this town, who are citizens of this town, to help protect it.”
“There’s a lot that would be impacted by this. It was sold in December for over $1 million,” Schull said. “So I suspect that some of this is coming because there is a very lucrative business, the kind of business coming that can afford to spend a million dollars on a lot, and I would suspect it’s Taco Bell or something similar.”
The 16,000 -18,000 cars that travel along Blythewood Road and I-77 does not make it conducive to be a pedestrian or biker friendly area, the Town’s Economic Development consultant, Ed Parlor. He suggested the McNulty Road area, under the guise of the Master Plan, could be transformed into a more fitting Town Center.
“Perhaps McNulty where you have a library, where you have a Sheriff’s office, a post office, churches, recreation, a school…” Parlor said. “You have neighborhoods growing around that area which could be walkable and bicycle friendly.”
While Council voted not to recommend the zoning amendment proposal, they agreed they would like to seek out more information and take suggestions from the Blythewood Architectural Review Board before the matter appears before the Town Council on August 24. Jim McLean, Co-Chair of the BAR and a Councilman who also worked on the Master Plan, brought up the BAR’s role in the discussions.
“You have the responsibility to the BAR to offer and revise the standards based on a case by case basis,” McLean said. “What we’ve done for the town and how we could deal with the situations that are currently out there, I think pretty much speaks for itself.”
I would just ask that you allow the BAR to take a little more collaborative role in this,” Moscati said. “I’m sure there’s some type of compromise in between rather than just scrapping the ordinance.”
The Commission will meet again before Town Council hears their recommendation and makes the final decision as to whether or not to adopt the proposed ordinance to relax the zoning.
When people come together with a collective intention, it’s a powerful thing. Magic happens.
And it’s happening at the Blythewood Historical Society and Museum where folks in the community are learning the history, techniques and art of quilt making. They are learning not only through films and lectures made possible through grants from the Nord Family Foundation and the Richland County Conservation Commission, but they are learning from hands-on instruction, how to make quilts, the art of our grandmothers.
On a recent Thursday, magic happened when a quilt gathering at the Langford Nord house brought together residents from Blythewood and Fairfield County to learn to quilt or to pursue and share their passion of quilting as a hobby. It was the first of three such quilt gatherings or classes that will be offered this summer.
At the first of the classes, beginner, intermediate and experienced levels of quilters begin their quilts. Each participant brought her own portable sewing machine. Quilter Donna Royson was the instructor.
Using a pattern called Whirligig from the company Quilt In A Day where Royson is a certified quilting instructor, the quilters used basic sewing machine quilting skills and consistent-sized strips of fabric to complete a whimsical yet traditional pinwheel square.
During the three-hour class, participants learned the techniques necessary to make the square and most completed as many as four squares during the session. The final product, a lap-size quilt, will need 40 of the squares which each quilter will finish at home. Once the squares are constructed, pressed and trimmed, participants will sew the squares together into rows and then sew the rows together to make the quilt top.
Although there were the various levels of expertise in the group, participants enjoyed a commaraderie and showed a willingness to assist each other. Friendships were formed and skills were enhanced.
Blythewood quilter Duane Walker will instruct the second class on Thursday, July 20 using a technique called paper piecing in which pieces of fabric are sewn to lines on paper to form unique patterns of squares. Later, the paper is removed and the squares are sewn together to form a quilt top. The beauty of this technique is that it provides accuracy of the final product by ensuring that all geometric shapes are exact and, in the end, are consistent and form a specific pattern.
The third and final class will be taught by Stephanie Alexander on Thursday, Aug. 3. During this class, quilters will sew various size strips of fabric to a foundation fabric to create a scrappy quilt top. This method has been used for centuries and is made from scraps of fabric left over from various other quilting and sewing projects. In other words, as mom made the family’s clothes, she saved the leftover scraps and sewed them together into a quilt.
While there is not sufficient time in a three-hour class to finish a quilt, the goal is to learn the technique and retain the instruction by constructing several blocks during the class period.
“I am excited and encouraged at the amount of talent and intrest in the quilting hobby in our area,” Royson said, “and it is my hope that we will have more classes on quilt construction and completion in the future.”
To drive interest in quilts and quilting, The Langford-Nord house has hosted video parties, “show and tell” times, quilting lectures and lesson as well as a Quilt Show during the last year. Over 60 local quilts have been photographed and documented for the Society’s Quilt Index.
“Making a quilt is fun and gratifying. We admire them, gift them, hang them, photograh them, treasure them and warm ourselves with them,” Royson said.
Beyond all this, why are quilts and their history important?
The study of quilts reveals the diversity of the makers. Quilting is a multi-cultural art unbound by race, class or ethnicity. Facts about the maker, quilt design, fabric and sewing techniques were used to revise history as they told stories from a woman’s perspective not previously documented.
In the United States, quilting became popular during the Colonial Era (late 19th century to the 1920s) as Americans were moving away from European influence. Many quilts were made to commemorate the Centennial (1876). However, most were made of necessity and used to keep a family warm. Although initially made for utilitarian purposes, they were no less artfully constructed. The makers’ ingenuity, originality, frugality and artistry is evident from studying of quilts of this era.
In the 1970s the Whitney Museum in NYC held a quilt exhibit which enjoyed a large attendance and wide media coverage. The display honored the inherent worth of quilts as “art objects with considerable visual eloquence.” The quilts strongly resembled abstract paintings through manipulation of geometric patterns, optical effects with color and form on a large scale.
Janet Catherine Berlo, Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester, wrote, “Quilts are one of our country’s most important artifacts. By studying quilts, we study the social like of things – we deepen our understanding of how we shape our culture through objects, and shape our understanding of objects through the various ways we interpret and value them at different points in history.”
Next time you encounter a quilt, study it and let it speak to you about its artistry, its history and its maker. Be reverent and honored that you are looking at a vital part of history.
To register for the second of the Historical Society’s summer quilt gatherings, email bgamble@kemsmithcpa.com or call 786-5200.
A QUILT is a multi-layered textile, traditionally composed of three layers of fiber: a woven cloth top, a layer of batting, and a woven back, combined using the technique of quilting, the process of sewing the three layers together. (Wikipedia)
The Watts Family 2017 Reunion was held at Sesquicentennial State Park last weekend. The event included a meet and greet, breakfast on Saturday and Sunday, a cook out and banquet on Saturday. Decendants of the late Otis Watts and the late Hadiyah Muwwakkil (Ella Lou Willingham Watts) gathered to celebrate with family and friends. The surviving children are Nello Watts (MI), Bertha Warren (PA), Clara Perkins (PA), Ruby Karriem (SC), Maryam Shareef (SC), Quadir Muwwakkil (SC), Moses Watts (SC), Miniimah Shabazz (SC), and Shirdene Sabree (SC).
BLYTHEWOOD – Another year and another Blythewood Dixie Youth team will be representing the town in The Dixie Youth World Series. This time it will be The Machine Pitch All-Stars headed to Cleveland, Mississippi for the World Series from July 28 through Aug.1. This tops off their first ever state title in a close 5-3 contest against Lexington.
