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| S C T E CHN I CA L CO L L E G E S Y S T EM ’ S
F I R S T 5 0 Y EAR S
headed up by John West, the West Committee, to see what other
states were doing to train workers and attract new, diverse in-
dustries. West was a good choice. While plowing a field behind
a mule, he realized the days of laboring for a pittance were over.
Other members included Marshall Parker, William C. Goldberg,
Robert E. McNair, Floyd Spence, and Rex L. Carter.
Hollings knew how to sell South Carolina too, as O. Stanley
“Stan” Smith, the tech board’s first chair (1961-1973), remem-
bers. “In 1958, I was the chairman of the Columbia United Way
and was at a training camp in Dayton, Ohio for campaigners. I
had a South Carolina badge. An elderly gentleman said, ‘I see
you’re from South Carolina.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“How do you like your lieutenant governor?”
“We like him fine.”
“So do I. That governor is the most impressive young man I’ve
met. I’m going to put a plant in his state.”
That man was Oliver Willets, chairman of the board for
Campbell’s Soup.
“Governor Hollings recruited that company here with no tech
system, no money, just personality and persuasion,” said Smith.
“I knew then, in ‘58, that he could sell.”
Hollings knew it too and if he could get a training system in
place, the sky would be the limit. The West Committee, seeing
how Georgia and North Carolina’s training programs enticed in-
dustries, proposed a three-point solution: one, a crash program
to provide immediate training for specific industries; two, more
emphasis on industrial arts programs in high schools; and three,
a program that would train high school graduates as industry
technicians and offer trade extension courses to industry people
and others.
That crash program, revolutionary training called Special
Schools, would address a huge need. All across the country man-
Governor Ernest “Fritz” Hollings,
pictured above with President John F.
Kennedy, wrote the bill establishing a technical college system
Resolution for Technical Education
Pictured from left to right
– Peatsy
Hollings, Governor Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, and Sapp Funderburk
The 1960s
M O B I L I Z I N G A G R E A T R E S O U R C E
