Mobile Home Sales in Coward, SC

Visitors to Philip Wingard’s Southern Decorative Arts booth on Friday at the Aiken Antiques Show could view some valuable pieces of South Carolina history.

There were four pots and one jug that Wingard said had been “attributed to” David Drake, who also is known as Dave the Potter, for sale.

The prices for the individual pieces of stoneware ranged from $4,000 to $35,000.

“It’s got everything but Dave’s name on it,” said Wingard of the most expensive offering. “It’s got the two slash marks, the ‘LM’ for Lewis Miles and the date.”

As a slave in the 1800s, Drake became a well-known and prolific potter in the Old Edgefield District. Lewis Miles was among his owners.

Drake’s works are included in an exhibit, “Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The stoneware will be on view there through Feb. 5 and then will be displayed at other locations later this year and in 2024.

In addition to Drake pieces, Wingard, who lives in Clover, South Carolina, had vessels made by other potters in South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina in his booth.

“I’m a pottery collector and dealer,” Wingard said. “I fell in love with pots when I was 36 years old. During a Christmas tour of homes, I went into the house of a friend of mine who was a preacher in Lincolnton, North Carolina. He had Burlon Craig face jugs, and I had never seen anything like them.”

Wingard, who owned a men’s clothing store at the time, was so impressed that he changed careers.

“I sold out and went straight into all this,” said Wingard, who has curated several museum pottery exhibits. “Things were revealed to me step by step, and eventually I became part of the research and the scholarship. I wrote an article about Thomas Chandler (another Edgefield potter) that was published in ‘Ceramics in America.’

“To me this is living the dream,” he added.

Wingard is a fan of the alkaline glazes that Drake, Chandler and their contemporaries used.

“It was an old Chinese formula, and it was a wonderful glaze to put on stoneware so you could preserve food safely,” Wingard said. “Prior to it in the South, they were using lead glazes, and lead glazes aren’t healthy for you. The alkaline glaze is utilitarian and very beautiful.”

Also available for purchase Friday at the Aiken Center for the Arts on the opening day of the Aiken Antique Show were furniture, jewelry, Oriental rugs, designer handbags, wood-carved birds and a variety of other items.

Bud Coward, who was helping out with security early in the morning, bought a lamp with a dog on its base.

“I don’t know the history of it or anything. I just liked the dog,” Coward said. “It looks like a long-haired Labrador retriever, and I had a dog that looked very similar to it. I found it when I was making my rounds.”

Linda Knox McLean attended the Antique Show with one of her sons, Richard Schmon, who recently moved here from Canada.

“It’s a pretty expensive realm here, but it’s fun to look at beautiful things,” McLean said.

Sharon Hagan, Sarah Malaby and Barbara Smoak are the co-chairs of this year’s Antique Show.

Proceeds support the Aiken Center for the Arts.

During the Cocktails & Collectors Preview Party on Thursday, “we had around 400 people attend,” Hagan said. “I think that’s the largest turnout that we’ve ever had. This is our only fundraiser of the year now, and it’s a premier event. Everyone in Aiken just loves it.”

The Antique Show continues through Sunday. The public can attend from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets cost $20 apiece.

There are 20 or so vendors.

The Aiken Center for the Arts is at 122 Laurens Street S.W.

By any reckoning, there was a lot of life in Clauson Ronald Coward’s 82 years. His death last week leaves us to ponder his remarkable legacy of civic leadership — and its inspiration for the younger folks of Greater Charleston whose leadership always is being summoned.

Ron Coward grew up in North Charleston near Park Circle, near the GARCO factory and mill village, not far from the paper mill and down the road from the Navy Yard. It was a community defined by high work ethics — and tight family functions. He was a North Charleston High School graduate, earned his mechanical engineering degree at Georgia Tech and became a naval officer. When he settled into his civilian career in the early ’60s, Greater Charleston and South Carolina were ambitious. So was young Ron Coward. Global opportunities abounded.

And for nearly five decades, Ron Coward balanced his business enterprise with his community service enterprise. He was never just a name on a civic board roster; he showed up, worked, led.

This brief summary of his community service resume profiles this legacy: president of S.C. Chamber of Commerce, Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce and Trident United Way; chairman of Naval Base Redevelopment, Trident Technical College Foundation and Roper St. Francis Health Foundation; president of North Charleston Rotary Club, senior warden at St. Andrew’s Church Mount Pleasant, a founder of Trident Urban League; and recipient of the Joseph P. Riley Sr. award presented by the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce for outstanding community leadership.

His general contractor business career gained traction in a celebrated economic development achievement. It was early 1966, the Vietnam War was escalating and ground troops needed a steady supply of helicopters. A Boeing-size industrial development prize quickly took shape. Engine-maker Avco Lycoming had defense contracts in hand and was hustling to expand its production facilities. Retrofitting an existing 400,000-square-foot building near Charlotte was the firm’s focus — until South Carolina’s elected leadership decided at the 11th hour to compete.

Robert Russell, then chairman and CEO of Charleston-based Ruscon Construction Co., delivered bad news to Gov. Robert McNair: There were no adaptable buildings anywhere in South Carolina.

But he had good news, too: A 400,000-square-foot building could be built to specifications and functional — within 60 days.

The Avco folks were doubtful. So was Gov. McNair. So was most of the construction management world.

But Charleston’s L. Mendel Rivers was the new chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, and Avco was eager to do business in South Carolina. Within three weeks of declaring our state’s interests, McNair announced the plant would be built on a tract off Leeds Avenue — within 60 days.

Russell and Coward were partners in a heavy steel building business and they were under the gun. They applied new construction sequencing for massive concrete pads and huge steel framing and walls. Interstate 26 was under construction and the paving equipment was “creatively” used to form the massive factory floor. Crews worked through the nights. The building was completed and ready for occupancy a week early.

“The 60-day target was just a detail,” said Russell as his team celebrated. “Hell, we could have done it even sooner.” And then he credited his young partner: “Ron Coward was the man with the good ideas and the competitive spirit. He knew what he was doing and what was at stake. He cares about this state.”

Ron’s daughter, Elizabeth, today a Mount Pleasant banking executive, was born the very day the Avco building was declared completed. Her father always delighted in noting that like the building, baby Elizabeth arrived a week early.

And within months after production began, the firm announced it would double the plant size and its employment. The project affirmed South Carolina’s global competitiveness. Technical education became an even greater priority; so did economic development marketing.

In 1973, Ron Coward was promoted to Ruscon’s president and CEO. In 1976, he left to form what would become the award-winning Coward-Hund Construction Co. of North Charleston.

Ron Coward had a legion of pals who admired him and enjoyed him. That’s the scorecard of a long life of steady networking, a long life during which the Lowcountry ignited in growth and progress, a long life of self-assigned contributions to a community that exists beyond personal interests.

He did well; he did so much good.

Ron Brinson, a former associate editor of this newspaper, is a North Charleston city councilman. He can be reached at rbrin1013@gmail.com.

Get a weekly recap of South Carolina opinion and analysis from The Post and Courier in your inbox on Monday evenings.

Bud Coward is in good company.

Earlier this year, the Aiken resident was inducted into the South Carolina Aviation Hall of Fame in Charleston.

Established in 1991, the Hall of Fame honors pioneers and leaders in the aviation industry who have made significant contributions to the development, advancement or promotion of aviation and have close ties to South Carolina.

Anderson finds satisfaction in role as Aiken Horse Show co-director after riding accident

Other members include astronauts Charles Duke, Ronald McNair, Frank Culbertson and retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden, a former NASA administrator.

Among the others are Fritz Hollings, who served in the U.S. Senate for nearly 40 years and was South Carolina’s 106th governor, and Robert Sumwalt, a former National Transportation Safety Board chairman.

“I am both honored and humbled to be among aviation greats,” said Coward, who is co-owner and broker-in-charge of Coward & McNeill Real Estate LLC.

Coward began his career in aviation at the age of 17.

He was active in the South Carolina Wing of the Civil Air Patrol in high school and was appointed the cadet commander of the Aiken Composite Squadron.

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Coward earned a commercial pilot certificate and also became a certified flight instructor.

In addition, he completed the requirements for an airline transport pilot certificate.

After graduating from The Citadel, Coward was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force in 1972. From then until 1976, he was based in Laughlin, Texas, and Newport News, Virginia.

Following his active service, Coward was an Air Force reserve officer assigned to the 437th Civil Engineering Squadron at the Charleston Air Force Base, also known as Joint Base Charleston.

Coward retired from the military in 1998.

From 1999-2004, Coward was the executive director of the South Carolina Division of Aeronautics.

During his tenure, the division developed the Comprehensive Aviation Information Reporting System and extensively revised Title 55 of the South Carolina Code of Laws that governs the Division of Aeronautics and public airports.

Coward also was involved in executing the first memorandum of understanding with the Federal Aviation Administration’s Flight Standards District Office in South Carolina.

Coward is a member of the Rotary Club of Aiken and a past president of the organization.

He was inducted into the Hall of Fame during the South Carolina Aviation Association’s annual conference in February in Spartanburg.

A group of 10 nurses who live in Cedar Creek recently had lunch at An Shu Cafe to celebrate Nurses Day. They brought with them assorted memorabilia from their days in nursing school, including a uniform, caps, photos, rings, name tags, and yearbooks.

Prizes were given to the nurse with the funniest school story and the one with the most words solved in a medical word scramble.

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The Aiken Design Review Board recently got an update on efforts to stabilize Hotel Aiken until the building’s future can be determined.

Aiken Economic Development Director Tim O’Briant and Community Development Block Grant Administrator Sabina Craig told the Design Review Board on May 2 repairs had been made to the building’s roof to eliminate water leaks and resultant damage to the structure.

Craig showed pictures in a PowerPoint presentation of the work being completed over a two-week period. The pictures showed the installation of crickets – bumps that direct the flow of water to points off the roof – and the covering of the crickets with a leak prevention substance known as a membrane. The presentation also showed the installation of a heavy tarp for the shingled parts of the roof and the installation of plyboard in holes where water was entering the building.

Design Review Board Chairman McDonald Law has said repeatedly – and again May 2 – that the addition added to the hotel in the 1930s eliminated the ability of water on one part of the roof to flow off of it, causing water and, eventually mud, to collect on the roof.

The crickets eliminate this problem by directing water to scuppers that take the water off the roof and down to the ground.

The Design Review Board is involved with the Hotel Aiken’s maintenance due to a request received last year to consider whether the structure was being demolished by neglect of the owner, the Aiken Municipal Development Commission. As per its usual procedure, the board is working with the owner – and the soon-to-be owner, the city – to improve and stabilize the structure while its future is being determined.

O’Briant added the additional water leaving the roof showed there were leaks into the hotel’s basement that need to be addressed. He said the next steps are to apply to the Design Review Board for permission to remove the decayed awnings and to remove the portico structure fronting on Richland Avenue.

He said the story is that the portico is located within the right of way owned by the South Carolina Department of Transportation and was added over a weekend after the city’s building inspector went home on a Friday evening.

O’Briant added the structure could be lightly pressure-washed.

The hotel’s future will be determined via a request for proposal issued by the city.

The Aiken High FFA Booster Club recently awarded three scholarships. Abigail Callas and Hanna Heape each received the Joe Wilson scholarship in the amount of $2,000, and Gabrielle Layfield received the Nick and Clarice Nichols Scholarship in the amount of $500.

Callas plans to attend the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia, to study agricultural education.

Heape plans to attend Winthrop University before continuing her education to become a veterinarian.

Hitchcock Place, an Enlivant community, is proud to announce it has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report as a 2023-24 Best Senior Living Community in the category of Best Assisted Living. The ratings offer a look at the best senior living communities across the United States, to assist older adults and their loved ones when researching and choosing the right senior living community for them.

For 2023-2024 Best Senior Living, U. S. News rated each community on several criteria, including resident and family members’ satisfaction with safety, care, community management and staff, value, and other services and amenities provided by the community.

Dianne Tucker Culbertson, a native of Owings, was the guest speaker at a recent luncheon meeting of the Henry Middleton Chapter National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.

The luncheon was held at the Green Boundary Club and the program was on the Liberty Trail and plans for the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War.

Culbertson was appointed by Governor McMaster in 2019 to the S.C. American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission, (SC 250) and serves as its chaplain. She is an Honorary SCDAR State regent and past NSDAR vice Regent, State Chaplain, and State Recording Secretary. She is president and co-founder of the Gray Court-Owings Historical Society and is heavily involved in historic preservation and land conservation.

The following students at Bob Jones University were named to the president’s list for high academic achievement during the 2023 spring semester: Hayden Cherry, Liesl Heinz, Hannah Lively, Abigail Woo and Hannah Woo.

To qualify for the president’s list, students must earn a 3.75 or higher grade point average for the semester.

Scott and Erin Truitt have joined Coward & McNeill Real Estate where they will specialize in investment and income producing commercial real estate, as well as development, recreational and timber land.

Both were born and raised in Aiken and have been successful in their respective careers. Erin worked as the local area manager for Fig Aiken Magazine for the past four years. Her passion for small businesses, sustainable growth and local community development helped her expand her knowledge base and desire to see Aiken grow. Through her connections with local business owners, she encompasses a vast knowledge of the area and the businesses that help to make up the culture here in Aiken.

Scott worked in the medical field for more than 10 years. He has also been involved in the commercial solar industry for over six years.

The Truitts live in Aiken with their two daughters, Cannon, 7, and Rowan, 5.

Samuel Richardson, a ninth-grade clarinet player with the AAA Homeschool Band, won the Summer Band Camp Scholarship by passing off the most points during the first three quarters of school.

South Aiken Baptist Christian School Bsnd student, VyShawn Jamison, won the SABCS Summer Band Camp Scholarship by passing off more music than was needed for an A for the first three quarters of the school year. Barb Rollins is the band director.

Young Harris College is pleased to announce that Kyla Rivers of Graniteville, has been named to the president’s for the 2023 spring semester at Young Harris College.

Students who achieve a 4.0 grade point average or better are eligible to be named to the President’s List.

Evan Tyler Partin, of Jackson, has been named to the dean’s list for Brewton-Parker College for the 2023 spring semester.

Caroline Hilley, a senior at Lakeside High School and the daughter of Derek and Tonya Miller, and Paskel Hilley received a 2023 Bright Futures Scholarship from Kimberly-Clark. She plans to attend the University of Georgia.

The Bright Futures program provides scholarship grants worth up to $20,000, or $5,000 per school year, to children of Kimberly-Clark employees in North America. Recipients are selected based on academic achievement, community service, work experience, and extracurricular activities.

Kimberly-Clark has a tissue and diaper manufacturing facility in Beech Island.

The following students at Furman University were named to the dean’s list for the 2023 spring semester: Emmeline Barth, Eva Buchanan, Sarah Carroll, Emily Clancey, Lila Dawson, Taiya Capitola-Christopher, William Livingston and Taryn Marks.

The construction of a distribution warehouse is included in the plans for land that is under contract to be sold near Exit 22 on Interstate 20.

There also will be commercial development on the roughly 17-acre site, said Mike McNeill, co-owner of the Coward & McNeill real estate firm, during an interview with the Aiken Standard recently.

The property is near the corner of Columbia Highway North, which also is known as U.S. Route 1, and Windham Boulevard.

SEC Realty Inc. owns the parcel, according to Aiken County land records.

McNeill said the prospective buyer is a developer, but declined to provide any other information about the potential purchaser or the price being asked for the property.

The deal is scheduled close next year in late January or early February.

“We are going to be assisting the developer with what is essentially a planned commercial/planned industrial development project,” McNeill said.

The distribution warehouse will be built on an approximately 12.5-acre section of the land located behind the tract’s frontage along Columbia Highway North.

“We are still working with the engineers in order to determine precisely what’s going to be the best use of that portion of the site,” McNeill said. “That’s why we have a range of square footage at the moment. There are all kinds of different aspects to a distribution warehouse that you have to consider.”

He added that demand for warehouses locally near I-20 is the reason for the decision to build the facility.

“We’ve identified with help from Will Williams of the Economic Development Partnership (of Aiken, Edgefield, McCormick and Saluda counties) and direct contacts with people through Coward & McNeill that there is a serious need for warehouses,” McNeill said.

And the search for a tenant might not last long.

“There is a potential one out there, but they don’t want to be known yet,” McNeill said. “The developer is in communication at a certain level with them through a contact.

“So we may have a tenant, but we may also be looking for a tenant,” he continued. “We’re not certain as of today, but we have absolutely established that there is a need without question.”

As a result, “we’re not afraid to step out there speculatively if it (the interest expressed by the potential lessee) dries up,” McNeill concluded.

Two tenants could share the warehouse, he said.

McNeill wasn’t sure exactly when the construction of the facility would begin.

“It’s tricky,” McNeill said. “It could be as short as four months to as much as, possibly, a year before dirt is being moved because there is a lot of site engineering involved. There is some topography out there to deal with and stuff, and we want to use that to our advantage as much as possible for things like docking.”

The remaining property with frontage along Columbia Highway North will be made available for commercial development.

There could be one parcel in that section or maybe two.

“The uses for locations such as this typically require more than an acre,” McNeill said. “They typically require a minimum of two.”

The businesses that might be built on the site include a motel, a small grocery store, a convenience store, a quick service restaurant and a sit-down restaurant.

“We have one development group looking at one of the potential parcels, but there haven’t been any hard negotiations yet,” McNeill said.

Earlier this summer, McNeill described the Exit 22 area as being “on the edge right now of seeing very dynamic and significant growth.”

Using $7.4 million in state, federal and local funds, the City of Aiken has made improvements and additions to the water and sewer systems near the interchange during the last several years.

In 2021, Shaw Industries Group Inc., a leading global flooring supplier, announced plans to invest approximately $400 million to expand its operations in Aiken County on East Frontage Road close to Exit 22.

Set for completion at the end of 2024, the expansion will create more than 300 new jobs.

There also have been upgrades to other existing businesses.

A new and much larger Circle K on Columbia Highway North has replaced an older version of the convenience store and gas station.

The Waffle House near Exit 22 reopened in June after undergoing a major renovation.