Good news

Rotary International President Shekhar Mehta and his wife Rashi met Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg Saturday afternoon at the Francis Marion Hotel. Also pictured are former Rotary International Vice President Anne Matthews of Columbia and the local Rotary district's current president, Paul R. Walter of Hilton Head Island. Photo provided.

FOCUS: Area Rotarians celebrate $2 million of charitable giving

By Andy Brack | South Carolina’s generosity was on full display Saturday night as about 50 big-donor Rotarians celebrated at a gala in Charleston’s Francis Marion Hotel — the very place their predecessors helped to build 97 years ago.

In attendance to pat them on the back was the most prominent Rotarian in the world — Rotary International President Shekhar Mehta of West Bengal, India. Mehta, an accountant by profession, visited the Holy City to thank Rotarians from the eastern half of the state for raising more than $2 million in new gifts of $10,000 or more over the last 18 months to help Rotary International’s philanthropic projects around the world. Among its top efforts are global projects to eradicate polio and provide clean drinking water to third-world countries.

“There are super-generous people in your area,” Mehta said in an exclusive interview. “They’re doing amazing things in the world. …

by · 11/08/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news
NEWS BRIEFS: State to have extra billion in cash in coming year

NEWS BRIEFS: State to have extra billion in cash in coming year

Staff reports  |  South Carolina economists are expected to announce that state lawmakers will have an extra billion dollars to spend in the 2022-23 budget thanks to federal pandemic relief funds and better-than-forecasted tax revenue collections.  

by · 11/08/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs
FOCUS: Battle for state’s top education job getting started now

FOCUS: Battle for state’s top education job getting started now

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher  |  State Superintendent Molly Spearman’s announcement last week that she wouldn’t seek reelection was an early surprise, but not particularly unexpected.  

She’s made progress in upgrading the state’s perennially limp education system the last few years by helping to provide much-needed boosts to teacher pay, update the school bus fleet and consolidate some small districts, which should lead to better education in those areas.

But in the recent months of the pandemic, she struggled with her own Republican Party in efforts to keep students and teachers safe. Whether it was about mask mandates or virtual schools, the General Assembly and Gov. Henry McMaster always seemed to be poking their fingers in school business that should have been left to the state’s constitutional officer elected to deal with schools.

by · 11/01/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news
ffff

NEWS BRIEFS: DIG SOUTH Tech Summit to return in May 2022

Staff reports  |  The College of Charleston will partner with DIG SOUTH to host the 10-year anniversary of the DIG SOUTH Tech Summit, a premier Southern event to connect global brands with regional startups.  The event, which will be May 11-13, will be held at the TD Arena, where DIG SOUTH launched the event in 2013.

by · 11/01/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs
James Island resident Rose Ann Boxx mourns the death of her brother from cancer almost 40 years ago. Photo by Andy Brack.

FOCUS: Lejeune’s toxic water haunts James Island survivor

Staff reports |  When James Island resident Rose Ann Boxx’s brother turned 32 in the late 1970s, he was diagnosed with colon cancer.

The diagnosis for Robert Thomas, came as a surprise — because of his age and also because there was no history of cancer of any kind on either side of the family.  But another surprise loomed for kids like Rose Ann and Robert who spent formative years in the late 1950s at Camp Lejeune where their father was a Marine — the water was toxic, poisoned for more than three decades by chemicals that leaked into the water supply. Thousands — including Robert and, eventually, Rose Ann — got cancer. 

She recalled last week how her older brother Robert went through several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatment to try to reverse the disease’s spread. In the throes of the disease, he managed to make jokes, she said, likening himself to a large Pac-Man, his body being slowly gnawed away by a foreign, floating enemy.

by · 10/24/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, News
The Leatherman terminal opened earlier this year in North Charleston providing extra capacity to Charleston's port operations.  Photo by S.C. Ports Authority.

NEWS BRIEFS: Investments create big opportunities for port, CEO says

Staff reports  |  Recent investments to add a berth, increase cargo capacity and deepen Charleston harbor provide critical opportunities for the Port of Charleston, said Jim Newsome, the president and CEO of the S.C. Ports Authority who announced his retirement during an annual report card last week about the agency. 

Students received free glasses from a California nonprofit. Photos provided.

FOCUS: Sanders-Clyde students are 1st in state to get group’s glasses

Staff reports  |  More than 80 students at Sanders-Clyde Elementary School in Charleston are the first in South Carolina to get new prescription glasses thanks to a nonprofit called Vision to Learn, according to the Charleston County School District. The organization offers screenings, exams, and glasses to children in need in Title 1 schools at no charge to the students or their families.

“The younger ones wanted to pick out glasses in their favorite color and the older students were excited to actually be able to see,” said Allison Wukovits, nurse liaison for the school district. “We’re confident that we’re going to see improved behavior and grades as a result of this program. You can’t learn if you can’t see.”

Of the students screened, about one in three needed an exam and 80 percent of those students needed glasses, the district said.

by · 10/18/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news
A portrait of Swails is now in the Senate chamber.  Photo provided.

NEWS BRIEFS: Portrait of Civil War hero out of closet and on Senate wall

By Herb Frazier  |  A portrait of a Black Reconstruction-era state senator and Civil War hero sat in a Statehouse closet for 13 years before finally being put on display Thursday in the Senate chamber without a public ceremony.

by · 10/18/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs
FOCUS: Bedshred’s recycling keeps mattresses out of landfill

FOCUS: Bedshred’s recycling keeps mattresses out of landfill

By Skyler Baldwin  |  A local mattress manufacturer and retailer has helped to keep more than 125,000 mattresses out of landfills through aggressive recycling and disposal procedures.

K.C. Rennie told the Charleston City Paper last week that his company, The Charleston Mattress, started Bedshred six years ago after seeing the impact that discarded mattresses had on landfills.  It now works with  Nine Lives Recycling in Pamplico, S.C., where the materials are stored and processed. 

“We started BedShred mainly as a way to dispose of old mattresses whenever we delivered new ones through The Charleston Mattress, just because we didn’t want to keep taking them to the landfill,” Rennie said. “They’re torn down, destroyed and never used in new mattresses — the foam becomes carpet padding and the metal goes to the scrapyard and the wood disappears real quick.”

by · 10/11/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news
One of Ariail's cartoons.

NEWS BRIEFS: City Paper’s Ariail is finalist in national cartooning contest

Staff reports  |  Charleston City Paper cartoonist Robert Ariail is the only weekly newspaper cartoonist to be a finalist in a national contest for excellence in local cartooning.

by · 10/11/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs