Gaffney and Textiles; What I've seen in my own lifetime

    In the spring of 1976 Yankees legend Bobby Richardson and Mickey Mantle's great friend came to Gaffney South Carolina to talk about his candidacy for the US Congress. Billy Graham and President Ford and some textile executives had talked him into it.
   He had a small meet and greet in the empty building that had recently been the apothecary and store of Fred Bernanke, the Uncle of later to Be Fed Chair Ben Bernanke who grew up in Dillon.
    I was a year or so out of Furman and thought it a chance to put some of my Marshall Frady inflected outlook to test.

     The best I remember in the room of about 30 or so folks that included John Hamrick who was the lay leader of the creation of my Dad's Church, Bethany Baptist, a mission of the FBC of Gaffney I brought to Bobby's attention the recent series of expository journalism in the Charlotte Observer about cotton dust and its effects on the lungs of textile workers, Brown Lung.

   I asked Bobby as a professing Christian longtime a leader in the FCA that if he were elected and had to vote on the health of textile workers, or the wishes on the wealthy textile owners that were backing his candidacy, how would he vote.

   I don't think I am embellishing the memory when I say he became a mess. It was an unraveling, as he bumbled around under conviction I think it safe to say, and was barely able to complete a sentence.

      Some folks in the room weren't happy with my question.

     But the good news is Gaffney textiles are on the Rebound and made CBS Sunday morning a month ago and this piece in the NY Times.

     https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/business/us-textile-factories-return.html

    All this has inflections for Trump politics in Upstate SC and we will look at that in a few blogs coming along

    

Forget the Appalachian Trail, Furman and Frank Johnson the test of Sanford's Presidential Bid

       Yesterday on Fox News Mark Sanford of the Furman class of 83 announced his Bid for the Presidency of the United States.

      To my knowledge is the first Furman grad to seek the High office.

       Current Furman President Elizabeth Davis was in administration at Baylor before she came to Furman. She has strong Baptist credentials that would honor the legacy of George W. Truett whose name adorns the Divinity School at Baylor.

        I don't speak for her, but am convinced she shares more in common with Baylor lecturer and great friend of the Baptist Joint Committee, Chet Edwards, than she does with Sanford, or for that matter her recent congressman in South Carolina, Trey Gowdy, who for several years shared his church membership at FBC Spartanburg, South Carolina, home of the Truth for a New Generation conferences the first decade of the 21st Century.

     For more on Edwards explore this link

     http://www.edwardsdavisstover.com/chet-Edwards

   Sanford and his Furman influence is troubled. His best political friends in South Carolina on the culture issues are the Campsens of the Charleston area. Rick Mosteller married Cyndi Campsen, of the Furman class of 78. Cyndi's Brother Chip ran track at Furman a few years after her. The Campsen's were among the fundamentalists in the South Carolina Southern Baptist Convention who tried to gain control of the University of Marshall Frady and others and move it into the fundamentalist camp. That resulted in Furman breaking official ties with the SBC.

    Now this seems to be ancient history of Trey Gowdy's successor, William Timmons, an active of Christ Church Episcopal in Greenville. See most recent blog.

      Sanford tells Fox News and NPR he is running on his convictions as a Free Trade Republican with concern about the national debt. His record and network on the culture issues deserves examination as well, and I hope Furman rises to the occasion these next months.

    To his credit, It is my understanding he has read and taken to heart Jon Meacham's reservations about Donald Trump in Meacham's book about the soul of America.

    What does Mark Sanford know about the Lincoln Republican Frank Johnson and how does Sanford Stack up with Johnson as a barometer, likely the last great Republican in the Southeast. 

    It would be grand if Furman could host Meacham and Sanford at Furman within the next couple months to go further into the soul of Mark Sanford.