Haley Autry’s cat, Willow, assists as Haley shows off the growing stack of Girl Scout cookies that she plans to donate to Oliver Gospel Mission residents. | Barbara Ball
RIDGEWAY – If a Ridgeway Girl Scout named Haley Autry, 9, knocks on your front door selling Girl Scout cookies, you might want to order a couple of extra boxes. She has plans for them – great plans.
A fourth grader at Richard Winn Academy, Haley was busy selling cookies door to door recently when a neighbor and friend of Haley’s family decided that, instead of purchasing cookies to eat, she would buy some from Haley and donate them to the residents of Oliver Gospel Mission in downtown Columbia.
Later that day Haley asked her mom, Jennifer, if she, too, could organize a cookie donation for the mission.
“Since homeless people probably can’t afford to buy the cookies,” Haley told her mom, “I want to make sure they get them.” She settled on Oliver Gospel Mission as her charity of choice.
As Haley busied about selling Girl Scout cookies, she asked each of her customers if they would like to purchase a box for the homeless. She set a goal of 100 donations and even made a video with a sales pitch and posted it on Facebook.
Her sales pitch was apparently hard to turn down.
She passed her goal in no time and continued collecting cookie donations until she had 200 boxes.
Her friend offered to deliver the cookies to Oliver Gospel Mission for Haley sometime next month.
“She is so excited for them to be delivered,” Jennifer Autry said of her daughter’s cookie philanthropy.
But Haley isn’t finished doing good. Now she’s collecting boxes of cookies for first responders.
“I’ve collected 30 so far,” she said.
“It’s amazing what she’s been able to do,” Autry said of her daughter. “And we are very proud of her.”
WINNSBORO – The merchants of downtown Winnsboro will be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on Sunday from 1 – 5 p.m. with a Candy Crawl.
Stores and restaurants will be open for shopping and dining. Stores displaying green shamrocks in windows will supply candy coins to fill up customers’ pots of gold.
The pots can be picked up at any participating merchant. Complete a game, puzzle or craft in the store to receive chocolate gold coins. Wear green for more gold coins. Solve a riddle or find hidden objects for more gold coins.
For more information about the merchants’ Candy Crawl, call 803-635-4242.
BLYTHEWOOD – The Blythewood Garden Club will feature well-known garden designer, horticulturist and author Jenks Farmer at its 12th Annual Community Gardening Event on March 21, at 7 p.m. in the Blythewood High School media center.
Farmer was the developer and former director of Riverbanks Botanical Garden and the founding horticulturist of the Darla Moore Farms Garden in Lake City. He designs gardens and landscapes throughout the Southeast in public and private spaces.
Farmer writes for a number of periodicals and is the author of two books: “Deep Rooted Wisdom: Stories and Lessons from Generations of Gardeners” and the soon to be released, “Funky Little Flower Farm.” He has a deep interest in collecting and growing Crinum Lilies, and his lily farm will be featured in an upcoming “Garden and Gun” magazine. He will offer some of his collection of bulbs for sale at the meeting.
The Blythewood Garden Club has offered the Blythewood community a variety of gardening and environmental programs over the last twelve years, featuring such gardening experts as Austin Jenkins who developed the Master Naturalist Program, naturalist Rudy Manke and ETV’s Amanda McNulty of ‘ETV’s “Making It Grow.”
Cultus Club officers include: Cookie Brooks, Mary Jane Wright, Patsy Black, Trev Sherrod, Margaret DuBard and Frances Barnett. Other book club members in attendance were Nancy Stevenson, Marlise Meyer, Carolyn Clemens, Mary Lynne A. Zeno, Phyllis Nichols Gutierrez, Laurens Livings and Sallie Kate Watford. Members not pictured included Dee Dee Branham, Barbara Douglas, Betty Harden, Priscilla Patrick and Janice Wolf. | Darlene Embleton
FAIRFIELD COUNTY – The Cultus Club, whose membership lives mostly the Blythewood and Fairfield County communities, is possibly the oldest continuous book club in Fairfiled County – perhaps even the state. And that history is of as much interest to members as the books they read and review.
The Club’s historian and current president, Frances Barnett, traced the Club’s history back to the beginning of the 20th century when an article in The News and Herald newspaper, dated Jan. 18, 1905, printed a report on a meeting of the Cultus Club, then located in Fairfield County.
Member Margaret DuBard, after further sleuthing, chronicled the history of the Club in a seven-page document that noted member Pinky Dicky’s discovery of handwritten minutes of the Club dating from 1967 – 1985. Those notes were recovered from the estate of member Rebecca Hanahan and produced written proof that the Club existed continuously for at least those 52 years.
Today, the Club’s 18 or so members meet alternately in each other’s homes on a monthly rotation. They most recently met at the Cedar Creek home of DuBard who co-hosted the event with Patsy Black. The meetings are a testament to the fact that gracious Southern hospitality lives on.
The meeting at DuBard’s home began at 4 p.m. and started off with refreshments and a setting that would have made Scarlett proud – decadent lemon and chocolate cakes, spiced tea sweetened with Blythewood honey and coffee were served from silver tea services at tables laden with china, linen napkins and fresh flower arrangements. It was, as Club secretary Cookie Brooks calls it, a very social time for catching up.
As the women sat chatting and nibbling, DuBard’s husband, Bill, appeared outside a picture window to sprinkle a significant amount of bird seed on a picnic table in the rear yard to allow attendees to enjoy the ‘fly in’ of upwards of 20 cardinals who came to feast on their evening meal.
With sated appetites, the group retired to the open living/dining room to sit together and enjoy the anticipated book review provided by Marlise Meyer. On this day, Meyer was reviewing ‘The First Conspiracy – The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington.”
Written by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch, the book was well suited for the event and setting. And Meyer explained the plot within the framework of the setting’s history, thereby whetting the Club members’ appetites to read the book themselves.
Besides Barnett serving as president of the Club, other officers include: Trev Sherrod, vice president; Cookie Brooks and Mary Jane Wright are both the Treasurer and longest living member.
Laurens Livings, whose son Jack’s book, ”The Dog,” was reviewed by the New York Times and won the prestigious Penn Award, is a second generation member of the Club.
“Promoting and supporting literacy, culture and the arts has always been important to the members of the Cultus Club,” DuBard said. “While our individual members have a wide range of talents, interests, concerns and responsibilities, the one thing we have in common is that we all love a good read,” she said.
WINNSBORO – Last Thursday Sheriff Will Montgomery presented a check for $10,061 to the South Carolina Special Olympics. The Sheriff’s department raised the amount during their Polar Plunge fundraiser at Wateree State Park on Feb. 23. “This is such a great cause,” Sheriff Montgomery said, “and we are proud to be a part of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Torch Run organization that directly supports South Carolina Special Olympics.”
St. John’s Episcopal Church is located at 301 W. Liberty St. in Winnsboro. | Martha Ladd
WINNSBORO – If you want to know who your neighbor is, you might want visit St. John’s Episcopal Church for a four-part Lenten Series beginning Sunday, Mar. 10 at 4 p.m. The church has invited speakers from the Episcopal, Jewish, Muslim and Greek Orthodox faiths to offer insights and observations about their faith and how love is the starting point for interfaith dialogue.
“With love as the common thread to each of these faiths,” a church flyer states, “Rev. Canon Alan Bentrup from the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina will open the series at the March 10 Sunday service.”
Other presentations are scheduled for March 17 (Rabbi Eric Mollo), March 24 (Imam Omar Shaheed, Masjid As-Salaam) and March 31 (Rev. Fr. Michael Plantis). A reception will follow each presentation.
At the same location for the past 130 years, this series is one of the ways St. John’s continues to serve its congregation and the town of Winnsboro.
Twelve years after the Episcopal Church was founded in Fairfield in 1827, the first church building was constructed in 1839, at Garden and Fairfield Streets. Burned to the ground first by Union soldiers in Feb. 1865 and again in 1869 by a fire started in a nearby stable, the building was rebuilt twice in two locations in Winnsboro.
Today the picturesque red brick church stands at 301 W. Liberty Street, on a treed lot with decades old shrubs that flower prolifically in the spring and summer.
“Temples made with hands could be destroyed…but the Church is eternal in the hearts of men,” Bishop Howe said at the laying of the current church’s cornerstone in Nov. 1888.
For information about the church or the Lenten series, call 803-815-1499 or 405-777-8440.
WINNSBORO – The merchants of downtown Winnsboro sold and displayed pink paper hearts for $1 during February to raise money for the homeless in the community. During the weekly merchant meeting on Friday, the money raised ($150) was presented to Bleva Bush Belton for the Closet to Closet ministry she runs in the Gordon Odyssey building for Fairfield County homeless students and their families. Presenting the funds to Belton are merchants, from left, Crystal Paulk (The Donut Guy), Vanessa Reynolds (Sunshine & Serenity), Belton, Wanda Carnes (Artists Coop) and Valery Clowney (farmers’ market).
Blythewood Presbyterian Church’s Pastor Rhett Sanders guides the plow and congregants pull ropes to break ground for their new church on Rimer Pond Road.
BLYTHEWOOD – After meeting at Blythewood High School for the last nine years, Blythewood Presbyterian Church Pastor Rhett Sanders and the church’s 240 members broke ground on property on Rimer Pond Road Sunday, where they hope to soon begin construction of a 7,600 square foot church.
“We hope to be in the building by the Fall,” Sanders said.
In 2010, a core group of about 22 families came out to Blythewood from Northeast Presbyterian Church where Sanders had been on staff for 22 years.
Today the congregation supports and partners with five ministries in England, North Africa, Mexico, Nicaragua and Thailand.
Locally, they are engaged with Columbia NE Young Life, Bethany Christian Services, Christian Assistance Bridge and Family Promise. The group partners with Round Top Baptist Church to produce a First Fruits Market Garden, where the produce goes to support Round Top’s feeding program, a CSA program and the Blythewood Farmers Market.
“We just started a Youth Soccer League with four teams,” Sanders said, “and we head the Backpack Program at Round Top Elementary that provides food for the weekend for students in need at three local schools.
“We desire to be a great church for the community of Blythewood and be a blessing to the world for the advancement of the Gospel,” Sanders said.
Participating in the service were Janeen Tucker, Round Top Elementary Principal, Mayor J. Michael Ross and Consuella Cunningham of the Round Top community.
BLYTHEWOOD – Cutting the ribbon for the grand opening of her new Blythewood boutique and gift shop, The Gilded Iris, Tina Johnson and her husband, Rick, right, share scissor duties with Mayor J. Michael Ross and her daughter, jewelry designer Christy Spivey. At left is store manager Phyllis Gutierrez (white jacket). The shop carries women’s clothing (Lilla P., Honeyme, Margaret Winters, Isle, Renaur and Private Label), refurbished furniture, one of a kind jewelry, local paintings and books. Guests in the background, from left: Denise Jones, Mike Switzer, Booth Chilcoat, Debra Humphries, Fairfield County Councilman Moses Bell and stylist Carla Pinnick. The shop is located at 428 McNulty Road. Open Mon. – Thurs., 11 – 5:30; Fri., 11 – 6 and Sat., 11 – 3.
Sheriff’s Deputies and teams take the plunge in Lake Wateree for charity. | Melissa Cooper
LAKE WATEREE – About 65 people took the chilly plunge on Saturday at Lake Wateree during the Fairfield County Sheriff Department’s fifth annual Polar Plunge, organizer Bill Dove, an investigator with the department said.
Sheriff Will Montgomery
“We raised over $10,000 this year,” Dove said, “which is the largest amount we’ve raised since we’ve been sponsoring the plunge. We had teams from not only Fairfield County, but Lugoff, Camden and Lake Wateree.”
Those donations go toward the support of the Sheriff’s charity, the Special Olympics of South Carolina.
Following the plunge everyone was invited to a lakeside lunch.
The Sheriff’s Office will host several events over the next several months to celebrate the South Carolina Special Olympics and raise money to fund Special Olympics events for these athletes. On May 3, the Sheriff’s Office will participate in the ‘County Line to County Line’ torch run through Congress Street, and they will host Tip-A-Cop at a local restaurant later in the year.
