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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
Whenever Russell got the chance, he’d talk to folks who knew
Martin. “They said if you want to know Wade Martin, study P.T.
Barnum. He was quite a showman.”
“And showmanship is what it took,” said Russell, “to get this
thing off the ground.”
Dr. Lex Walters called Martin a visionary. “Thank goodness
he developed the master plan for the system and laid it out within
the legislation.” Martin’s plan avoided North Carolina’s mistakes.
Said Walters, “When North Carolina put in its two-year college
system, any county that wanted one, if it put up a half a million
dollars, the state would match it. We put in a system based on
demographics, not politics, and we looked at population densi-
ties in hopes we could serve 95 percent of the population within
a 30-mile radius of an institution.” It worked beautifully. Years
later John West would refer to the system as “the most successful
program of our time.”
Potential tech centers sprouted on a South Carolina plan-
ning map. A tech center in Greenville was obvious because of
Daniel Construction. “Charlie Daniel was well on the way to or-
ganizing the technical center for Greenville before we had even
devised it,” said Stan Smith. “Columbia and Charleston were
obvious. The difficult ones were Piedmont and Florence-Dar-
lington, which had to combine. Horry-Georgetown had to
combine.”
The commission drew up a contract. “The local community
would put up the building and own the land, and the technical
systemwould equip the building and manage and pay the faculty
and administration,” said Smith. “We only had one exception to
that philosophy—Senator Stevens of Horry County. He insisted
he was going to have one for his county. Period. So we solved
that by putting all six commission members and two ex-officials
in a bus and meeting him and his delegation in a restaurant. We
persuaded him to combine Horry and Georgetown Counties, or
he wouldn’t get any state money.”
Dr. Lex Walters,
president of Piedmont Technical College from 1968–2008
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
