Mobile Home Sales in Cedar Creek, SC

Thirty years ago, in April 1993, members of Cedar Creek Church held their first in-person public worship service in a rented daycare facility. There were 120 people in attendance.

To mark this occasion and to celebrate all God has done over the past 30 years, Cedar Creek Church will hold a 30th birthday celebration and party like its 1993.

“We are so excited to be able to celebrate the lives that God has touched and transformed over the last 30 years,” said Phillip Lee, a senior pastor at Cedar Creek Church. “We expect, hope, and prayerfully look forward to the next 30 years and how God uses Cedar Creek Church. God has been faithful, and we are so blessed as a congregation.”

The festivities will begin with a 5K color run at 9:30 a.m. A 1-mile Fun Run/Walk will begin at 11 a.m., and both runs will conclude with at party. Registration for the 5K is $25, the Fun Run is free. Proceeds from the 5K will go toward a community gift to be announced at the event.

The Cedar Creek Birthday celebration will be from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 15, at Generations Park. The event will feature lunch provided by Chick-Fil-A, inflatables, a petting zoo, camel rides and cake. There also will be music from Carolina Cherry.

“Anyone who has ever been a part of Cedar Creek Church is invited, but we also want to celebrate with our communities,” Lee said. “It’s going to be a fun, incredible, huge outdoor party. Even though it’s our church’s birthday, what really excites me is that we’re going to give a gift to our community.”

Cedar Creek Church began as a group of six couples meeting in the home of founding pastor, Richard Swift. After meeting for about six months, this group of couples multiplied into six new Homes Open for Ministry and Encouragement groups. HOME Groups were the primary vehicle for nurturing, equipping, encouragement, outreach, and pastoral care.

Shortly after, the first in-person public worship gathering occurred in April 1993 in a rented daycare facility, with 120 people in attendance. After one year of meeting in the rented space, 93 families raised $1 million which was used to purchase 14 acres on Banks Mill Road in Aiken. Construction began the following year, and the church has since become one church in many locations. In addition to the Banks Mill Campus, the West Campus in Graniteville launched in January 2009, and the Ridge Campus in Batesburg-Leesville launched just seven months later, in August 2009.

Dozens of veterans who live in the Cedar Creek development got a salute from their neighbors Friday afternoon, with VFW Post 5877 serving as the host site for a gathering run by Cedar Creek’s marketing committee, in early observance of Veterans Day.

A free lunch was part of the package, and retired Marine Claude Davis, the leader of South Aiken High School’s Naval Junior ROTC program, was one of the featured speakers.

Davis, whose background also includes more than 50 years of involvement in the Boy Scouts of America, encouraged his listeners to remember to pass their experiences along to others.

“I mean, that is vitally, vitally, vitally important. You’d be amazed – maybe you wouldn’t be amazed – at how many families there are now that don’t have anyone ... that has served in recent memory. They have no idea about what our nation is about. They have no idea what our history is about, and they have even less of an idea about our current military and what their responsibilities as military folks are.”

The people at Friday’s assembly are part of the solution, he said, noting that teachers in modern America are no longer allowed to take care of disciplinary problems “right there and on the spot.”

Child abuse, Davis said, definitely includes situations in which “we have lots of youngsters that come to school” and yet “don’t know the right way, and nobody has taken the opportunity to straighten them out.”

Referring to young people, he urged the veterans among his listeners to “take each and every opportunity that you have to tell them about why you joined, tell them about what your experiences were.”

Veterans, in addition, should focus on taking care of each other. “Folks, those things are critical. If we want this nation to be the same way ... 100 years from now, we have to invest something ... and every last one of us sitting in this room has some skills that are vital to the survival of this nation,” he said.

Also speaking to the gathering was Dwight Bradham, Aiken County’s director of veterans affairs. Bradham, an Army retiree, has been in his current role since January 2016, and noted that he has “done everything other than stand on the roof and shout, or parade naked down the middle of Whiskey Road, to try and let my veterans know that we have an office here, and we are here to serve you.”

His office, he said, provides such services as eligibility screening and advising with regard to benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“We provide guidance, also, to our Aiken County Veterans Council and to our various veterans service organizations we have, much like the VFW here, our American Legions, our Marine Corps League,” he said, confirming his aim “to be able to facilitate a more favorable climate for veterans and their beneficiaries in Aiken County.”

Bradham added, “My single goal is, I want to be able to make sure that Aiken County is the best place for a veteran to live.”

Jim McNair Jr., largely known for his roles as owner of Aiken Golf Club and Cedar Creek Golf Club, reached back several decades Sunday afternoon, sharing some local golf highlights as a speaker in the Friends of the Aiken County Historical Museum’s lecture series.

“A Walk in the Park: Highland Park Golf Course and Aiken Golf Club” focused on a facility once linked to one of the South’s most luxurious hotels.

“You can imagine the who’s who on the register of the Highland Park Hotel at the time,” he said, confirming “very wealthy socialites” from New York, Connecticut and neighboring states.

“They had fine dining, lavish parties, horse shows, badminton, tennis, croquet and of course, they had golf,” he said, displaying a New York Times advertisement from 1896 that promoted golf in Aiken.

“It made me question where were they playing golf, because the Palmetto Golf Club was private - just for the Winter Colony. It was not open to resort guests.”

The magnificent hotel, he said, went up in smoke Feb 6, 1898, starting in the basement around 5 a.m., with major factors including inadequate water pressure and water supply to address fire in such a large building. All guests and staff members, however, were safely evacuated.

Another hotel was built in 1912, with a golf course as part of the package - 11 holes at the start and a complete course by 1915.

The 90-room hotel’s opening was reportedly described, in a newspaper account, as “the chief social event of the season,” McNair said.

Among major figures in the golf course’s early days were John Inglis, the golf pro (and a founding member of the PGA), and Donald Ross, whose career included designing hundreds of courses around the U.S. and Canada.

Another local claim to fame came via May Dunn, the first female professional player in the U.S., who suggested having special “forward” tees for women’s use. That led, McNair said, to Highland Park becoming the first course in the country to have such an arrangement.

Top-level tournaments for women were held there in the late 1930s, with such players as Babe Zaharias, Helen Detwiller and Patty Berg among the most prominent.

Aiken’s municipal government bought the course in 1939, and the hotel succumbed to fire in 1940, while the golf course remained. The course was then sold in 1959, and McNair’s family entered the scene, as James McNair Sr. a professional golfer, bought it and the name was changed to Highland Park Country Club.

The elder McNair’s claims to fame included one from Sept. 9, 1947, when he set the course record, shooting a 58. He retired in 1987, and a massive rebuilding project took place in the late 1990s, and the name was changed to Aiken Golf Club.

Unusual events in more recent history, he noted, included using the course in 2007 for filming the comedy movie “Who’s Your Caddy?”, and additions have included the City of Aiken Golf Championship, which started in 2010 and is en route for its 13th presentation this year.

The course’s accolades have included being named as “South Carolina’s best-kept secret,” in terms of being an excellent facility with a relatively low profile. The First Tee organization, he said, has also established a partnership with Aiken Golf Club in a successful effort to build a joint facility, with USC Aiken, to promote not only the sport but also First Tee’s efforts in character education.

The spring lecture series, “Legacies of the Winter Colony,” will continue April 3 and April 24. The next lecture, by Anna Dangerfield and Dr. Lil Brannon, is “Hopelands Gardens and Rye Patch.” Following will be a presentation by Alecia Wagoner, is “Fashions of the Winter Colony.” Another, “The Equestrian Legacy,” by Linda Knox McLean, has been postponed until the fall, due to surgery.

Also in the weeks ahead will be a July 12 program by Leah Walker, on “seldom-told tales of the museum,” and an Aug. 16 presentation by author Kathryn Smooth on her new book, “Baptists and Bootleggers: A History of Prohibition in the South.”

As a way to help the community to become more aware of mental health and its connection to religion, The Overflow Foundation is having two events.

The Overflow Foundation and Cedar Creek Church will hold its second Mental Health and The Modern Church Conference from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 4, at Cedar Creek Church in Aiken and a one-day caregivers retreat on Saturday, Nov. 5, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m at Camp Long.

The goal of the conference is to equip churches, church leaders, congregations and those who attend any church to provide effective and compassionate care to individuals (and their loved ones) who struggle with their mental health, according to a news release from The Overflow Foundation.

The conference will be hosted by Phillip and Terry Lee.

Terry Lee, who is the founder and executive director of the Overflow Foundation, started the organization after she lost her eldest son, Phillip Lee Jr., to suicide on Sept. 6, 2018.

“With the increasing numbers of individuals and families dealing with mental health challenges, we want to help equip not just pastors and church leaders, but individuals within our churches to provide care and assistance,” Phillip Lee Sr. said in the release.

The conference will include breakfast, worship, small breakout sessions and large group gatherings.

While the conference will focus more on mental health and the church, the retreat will be focused on self-care.

Terry Lee said the retreat will offer the opportunity to sit and soak in the peace that only God can give, despite whatever circumstances we find ourselves in and perfect time for self-care.

The leader of the retreat will be Mary Tutterow, author of “The Heart of the Caregiver” and “The Peaceful Caregiver.”

Those caring for someone with disabilities, a chronic illness, age-related issues or anyone searching for peace can attend the event.

Registrations for both events can found at www.mhmcconference.com (conference) and conta.cc/3enWr6N (retreat).

Registration for the the conference is now open and will be $75 per person, and a group of five will be $60 per person.

The cost for the retreat is $35 and includes coffee, snacks, lunch and materials.

The Cedar Creek football team’s path to perfection started in early August with the start of training camp.

It began in earnest at the Battle at the Beach later in the month.

And the review of a fourth-down pass by Woodrow Wilson in the final seconds of Saturday’s NJSIAA Rothman Orthopaedics South/Central Group 3 championship game seemed to take longer than the entire four months that preceded it.

Woodrow Wilson running back Naz’sir Oglesby was ruled down inches short of the goal line on a fourth down pass from the 7-yard line with 10 seconds left in the game, giving Cedar Creek a 35-34 victory that capped a perfect 13-0 season.

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Bill Evans can be reached at bevans@njadvancemedia.com. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.