Criminal Defense Attorney inLockhart, SC

News that Hope Hospital would close devastated the small community of Lockhart.

Hope Hospital, located in the center of the mill community of 617 residents, opened in 1950 to accommodate the medical needs of the employees of Milliken's Lockhart plant.

When the mill closed several years ago, the number of patients declined, leaving a loss of revenue for the 10-bed hospital, administrator Mildred Purvis said.

"We knew it would be closing," said Purvis, who has worked at the hospital for 26 years. "We haven't had many patients since Thanksgiving, and only one since March 6."

When that patient was discharged on April 16, the state's smallest hospital closed its doors for the last time.

"We have a lot of older people in Lockhart, many who are on Medicare or Medicaid," Purvis said. "And the hospital didn't accept either one, so our patient population had really gone down."

Now, to the dismay of many Lockhart residents, they must travel 15 or 20 miles to the nearest hospital in case of an emergency.

Hope Hospital is located practically in Beverly Schrader's back yard.

"It was so close and convenient," Schrader said. "If you ever needed help in a hurry, they were there. Now, I have to call an ambulance or make the drive."

Purvis said the hospital's board of trustees had no choice but to close the hospital because of declining revenue.

Hope Hospital staffed one full-time doctor, Dr. Robert Wentz, who still has his medical offices inside the building. Four full-time nurses and two part-time nurses were employed by the facility.

Some of those nurses retired, while others have accepted jobs elsewhere.

A pharmacy technician employed by Hope Hospital has decided to open his own pharmacy in Union.

Purvis will stay at the hospital for three months to get records in order.

"(The news) was devastating to us," Lockhart Mayor Ailene Ashe said. "It's a terrible thing to see go because it's so much a part of our lives."

The property and building will revert back to Milliken Corp., which helped open the hospital. No decision has been made on what will happen to the building, Ashe said.

Lynne Powell can be reached at 487-7146 or [email protected].

EDUCATION

Lockhart’s lone remaining school graduated its last class of eighth-grade students this week.

The Tuesday night ceremony was held ahead of Lockhart School’s last official day of classes for students on Thursday. Union County schools trustees made the call to shutter the school earlier this year.

The move means students and teachers will be assigned to other schools within the county when classes resume in the fall.

It's a conclusion to a proud chapter in the tiny mill village's history.

“I cannot express how heartbroken I am to see the school go,” Lockhart Mayor Ailene Ashe said. “What we have left is not a whole lot, and most of the buildings are gone. We’ve always wanted to be able to say, ‘You need to come to Lockhart,’ and the school was always an important part of that.”

Ashe has served as the village’s mayor for much of the past two decades, but long before that she was just a girl in love with Lockhart.

She remembers when the school was first built in the mid-1950s after the previous school, which was constructed in the years just after World War I, burned down.

That fire forced the children of Lockhart to take classes for more than a year in an armory up the road, so when the new school opened, Ashe said it was a welcome sight.

Those were thriving years for the community, when textile mills still provided a good living for people in Union County, Ashe said. When those mills closed, much of the work dried up, and Ashe said the community has been on a downward trajectory since.

Citing economic concerns, Union County school trustees authorized Superintendent Bill Roach in February to explore reassigning the school’s 30-plus faculty and staff members to other positions in the district. The call was made in subsequent weeks to close the school, which has served kindergarten through eighth grade students for decades.

Roach declined to be interviewed for this article. Mike Massey, a member of the Union County Schools board of trustees, said he’s sad to see Lockhart lose its school. He voted against the measure in March to close the facility, though he said he understands the reasoning for the decision.

“The school has really been a rally point for this community for a lot of years,” Massey said. “I understand what it means to the town and to its people. I also realize the trustees have to take everything else into consideration, and I don’t have any hard feelings.”

Massey is closer to the situation than most. He attended Lockhart School in his elementary and middle school years, and he graduated from the town’s former high school before beginning his own career in education. He spent his last two years at Lockhart before retiring three years ago.

“They were probably two of my greatest years,” Massey said. “So I guess you could say I started my career and finished it there. Obviously, this affected a lot of people that I know personally.”

Now, Massey said the district must turn its attention to the school’s parents and students, and to its former employees, who will find new homes in the county’s other schools when the academic year resumes this fall.

“How do we get that taken care of with the least amount of fuss and make that as smooth as we can?” Massey asked.

Massey said he believe the students, and especially the parents, will be tremendous assets to the district’s other schools.

“Almost to a parent it’s always been, ‘I’m here for my child, tell me what I need to do,'” Massey said. “It’s a great group of engaged people. They really care about what’s going on, and to a certain extent I think the school’s size helped foster that. It’s my belief they’ll continue that on when they switch schools.”

Ashe said her attention will turn to finding a way to preserve the school property, which she said the school district has been willing to turn over to town leaders. She said upkeep costs could make that prohibitively expensive.

“We’re going to do everything we can to keep this a part of this community,” Ashe said.

She said former Lockhart School students and staff will gather at the school for a reunion from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 23.

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The anger in Jonesville and Lockhart over the loss of their high schools has faded with time, but the sense of loss still lingers.

“Friday night football was the main event up there,” Lockhart business owner Bernice Canupp said.

Games were major social gatherings, with residents in both towns coming out to cheer on the Wildcats and Red Devils. School events were supported by the whole community.

But that ended 10 years ago, when the high schools in Jonesville and Lockhart were combined with Union High School to form Union County High.

The decision to consolidate was a divisive one. Many residents of the two communities argued the move would hurt their towns and rob them of a piece of their identity.

The two high schools were estimated to need somewhere in the range of $13 million in repairs. Consolidating the three high schools would save about $1 million annually, the Union County School District estimated.

In the end, economics prevailed, and most residents came to accept the change. But many still miss the institutions that helped bring everyone together.

'A tough decision'

The vote came in March 2007.

“It goes without saying that there was a feeling of loss in the Jonesville community as well as the Lockhart community. Those schools were an important part of the fabric of Union County,” said David Eubanks, who served as Union County's interim superintendent about a month after the vote. “It was a tough decision and it was an emotional decision.”

Consolidation came down to money, he said. Renovating the two high schools would have been costly, and enrollment was declining at all three of the county’s high schools.

“The school board did make that decision, in my opinion, just months before they probably would have had to make it because of the economic downturn,” Eubanks said.

After the 2006-07 school year, 364 Jonesville High students and 117 Lockhart High students became part of the consolidated Union County High School, according to S.C. Department of Education records.

Elementary and middle school students continue to use the Lockhart High building. Even before consolidation, all grade levels shared one facility, but because the lower grades don't require as much technology and lab space as the high school would have needed, the district has been able to focus funds on maintenance.

Jonesville High now houses the town's municipal complex, but still bears banners and logos with the school's old colors and Wildcat mascot.

Current Union County Superintendent Bill Roach said while the decision has come to be accepted by many, it remains an "open wound" for some residents.

“What happened then was, you’re shutting a page of history for a lot of those folks,” he said.

Small town voices

Bernice Canupp owns Lockhart Café, one of only a handful of businesses operating in the town limits.

“I hated it,” Canupp said of the consolidation effort.

Lockhart Café is surrounded by old mill houses that have outlived the mill that was once the heart of the community.

In 1994, Milliken & Co., the town’s major employer, pulled out. Since then, new development has come slowly.

Recently, a Dollar General — referred to by some as “mini Walmart” — was built on the outskirts of town. Rounding out the local businesses are Bailey’s Café, another small restaurant, and two gas stations.

A grocery store, pharmacy or doctor’s office are at least a 20-minute drive away in either Union or Chester County.

In front of the old mill pond, a painted red wall reads, “Welcome to the Beautiful Town of Lockhart.”

“Now, there’s really nothing here,” said Lockhart resident Ronnie Swanger as he passed a recent afternoon fishing at the pond. “It’s just a little forgotten mill village now.”

Swanger, a 1965 Lockhart High graduate, has lived in the town all his life.

“We had our own school, our own teachers," he said. "When I graduated, we only had about 17 seniors."

A 15-minute drive down Highway 9 from Lockhart is Jonesville, a larger and less centralized town.

Jonesville has more residents and businesses than Lockhart, but shared its feelings about consolidation.

Kolby Gage, a lifelong Jonesville resident, was in the school’s final graduating class in 2007. He said he didn’t think much about consolidation at the time. A decade later, he said he’s proud to have been part of history.

“There’s never another class coming from that building,” he said. “It’s part of the culture, even still today.”

Losing an identity

A lingering sore spot for Jonesville and Lockhart residents is how the consolidation plan was executed.

When the high schools were combined, school trustees decided to keep Union High's Yellow Jackets mascot at Union County High. That upset residents who had supported a plan proposed by a group of students, teachers and community members that would have created a new mascot, the Wolfpack, and new school colors to go with the new name.

But school trustees said redoing the signs at the school and elsewhere in the county would cost too much.

“I was disappointed in the way they did that,” lifelong Lockhart resident Gerald Gregory said.

Gage agreed.

“If they were going to combine the schools, they should’ve had a new mascot,” he said. “They shut down Jonesville, they shut down Lockhart, and just made Union bigger.”

Coming together

Some efforts were made to honor the connection the two last high school classes in the Jonesville and Lockhart buildings felt to their old schools.

The Jonesville and Lockhart high classes of 2008 and 2009 were allowed to be academically ranked with both Union County High students and with the Jonesville and Lockhart high groups, respectively. For two years, three high school valedictorians were recognized in Union County.

Students also could choose a transcript bearing the name of Union County, Jonesville or Lockhart high school.

“When it was all said and done, people wanted it to work,” Eubanks said. “And, over time, those people are the reason it worked.”

Eubanks understands why residents were upset. He said he told district staff to be ready to listen to people's concerns.

“We had to have empathy for those folks who had a sense of loss. A sense of healing had to be there,” he said. “The administration, the school board, everyone had to be a good listener. You weren’t going to talk anyone into understanding or accepting the schools were closed.”

A Cowpens High School graduate, Eubanks is no stranger to consolidation. He became principal of Broome High School one year after Spartanburg School District 3 merged Cowpens and Pacolet high schools.

Community members more readily accepted that consolidation because the new school was a fresh start with a new name and mascot, Eubanks said.

“I didn’t disagree with them. I tried to approach it like, ‘I know exactly what you’re talking about. I know those schools are a big part of your community,’” he said. “I think the greatest concern I heard was, ‘We will lose our identity.’ I said, ‘Try to help develop a new identity with that Union County High School.’ I feel there has been an attempt to do that, and just by virtue of the fact I didn’t hear anyone say the consolidation was a problem the last time I was down there, I think a lot of people did that.”

Acceptance

Even though the high school is gone, Gregory said he remains proud of Lockhart schools.

“We all still love and support that school and try to go to about everything they have,” Gregory said.

Students from Lockhart have benefited from going to Union County High, and have more opportunities there now than they would have had at the old school, Swanger said.

“I really didn’t like it to start with, but I really think it’s a good thing now,” he said.

There was also no way the district could've sustained three high schools in the long run, given the declining enrollment, aging facilities and small tax base, Eubanks said.

Roach said in the decade since consolidation, the district has worked hard for its students and its residents. The district has increased the programs offered at Union County High to accommodate students from across the county.

Gregory said while he thinks the process should’ve been handled differently, the bitterness many once felt has long since disappeared.

“You’ve got some with grudges from the start, but it has been good for the kids,” he said.

Eubanks said that sentiment is what has ultimately prevailed.

“There are a lot of people who still have a lot of value for those two schools in their soul, and that’s not going away,” Eubanks said. “I think everyone has come to accept, to a great degree, that it was in the best interest of the students in Union County so they could be better provided for academically.”