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
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1 9
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
HIGH GROUND
Others weren’t on board from the start. According toHollings,
“The Chamber of Commerce, the educators, the textile leaders,
everybody was against technical training. The textile industry
wasn’t going to pay for skills to get workers better jobs and put
them out of business. The Chamber of Commerce wanted to
slam the door at two o’clock and go play golf. People thought we
were starting technical training in the public schools and stuff
like that. We had a hell of a time.”
To overcome the textile leaders’ resistance, Hollings kept
working with them. “They knew I was right. We had to do some-
thing. We had all come back fromWorld War II, and we were all
trying to play catch-up ball with the country.
South Carolina was broke.”
Hollings fought for his dream, and the
technical training system moved ahead.
Good chemistry blessed Stan Smith and
Hollings, who worked hard together, and
though neither man knew it, they had
worked together before in a more challeng-
ing situation far, far away—in Europe’s dark,
densely forested Ardennes.
“The Battle of the Bulge lasted only 31
days,” said Smith, “but it seemed like forever. If you want to see
how dark it was, close your eyes and put your hands tight over
them. We were fresh off the boat from England and scared to
death. They put us with the Third Armored Division in low
ground.”
The Third Armored guys wanted to take the high ground. So
did the Germans. At eight p.m. Christmas night the Germans at-
tacked. It was so dark the U.S. forces couldn’t see a thing. Fighting
was impossible.
“The next night,” said Smith, “searchlights behind the hill
beamed against black snow clouds. Light reflected back and you
could see a tank, a truck, or even a man move.”
Sixty-eight years later Smith was visiting Hollings, and the
men talked about that battle. “Those search lights saved thou-
sands of lives,” said Smith. The commander of the search light
battery? An officer in the U.S. Army’s 323rd and 457th Artillery
units, Ernest Hollings.
Stan Smith and Hollings had been friends for years but nei-
ther knew the other was there in the Ardennes those cold black
nights. “He put those lights to work, and it changed the direction
of night fighting,” said a grateful Smith.
Hollings changed South Carolina’s direction too. He got his
technical training system and in time, it was the envy of many
governors. “It seemed almost every governor came to study and
emulate our technical training program,” said Hollings. Ironical-
ly the system’s first school began on high
ground of another sort, a barren landfill
upstate.
One person’s trash site is another per-
son’s technical center. Dr. Lex Walters
says Senator Morrow Bradley pushed
Greenville Technical Education Cen-
ter (TEC) forward. “Bradley who was
all-powerful said, ‘Build it, and I’ll find
the money.’ He had them designing the
building before the money was available.
Sapp Funderburk got the site—a garbage dump.”
The day for Greenville TEC’s groundbreaking arrived. A cold
wind swirled around Governor Hollings, Avery Fonda, Pete
Marchant, Leon Campbell, and Sapp Funderburk. As they stood
on high ground of another sort Hollings quietly advised the men
holding shovels, “Don’t dig too deep. You’ll hit garbage.”
The men shoveled dirt around, and Greenville Tech came
into being in 1962 on eight acres of land. Walters went to work
there in July 1962 as a faculty member. “Greenville inserted a
reversion clause into the agreement that if the institution didn’t
use the land in a certain period, it would revert back to the city,”
said Walters. “I’ve always accused Tom Barton of building a
“It seemed almost
every governor came
to study and emulate
our technical training
program.”
—Ernest “Fritz” Hollings
