FILE - (Nov. 11, 2008) World War II veteran Harry J. Thomas, right, stands with Brig. Gen. Brett T. Williams, during the singing of the national anthem at a Veterans Day ceremony at the 18th Wing headquarters at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.(Ryan C. Delcore, U.S. Navy, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

In 2020, Maj. General (Ret.) William F. Grimsley became South Carolina's first Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs. From the beginning, Grimsley and his staff have defined the purpose of the new Department of Veterans’ Affairs as leading and enabling “a state-wide coalition of partners to create and sustain an environment in which Veterans and their families can thrive as valued and contributing members of the South Carolina community and the Nation.”

Grimsley talks with Walter Edgar about how the Department strives to achieve that purpose and the way it is expanding and building partnerships to do so.

- Originally released 04/15/22 -

(Courtesy of Middleton Place Foundation)

Charles Duell inherited the historic properties Middleton Place and the Edmondston-Alston House, Charleston, SC, in 1969. He was 31 years old.

A graduate of Yale, he had begun a career in finance on Wall Street. But the circumstances of his sudden inheritance compelled him to leave New York City and move his family to South Carolina. There he would take up the challenge of reviving the houses, gardens, and forestlands of his forebears. He convinced countless relatives, friends, and associates to work with him. Their collective efforts over the last half-century have resulted in a dynamic balance of historic preservation and innovative interpretation. Moreover, Middleton Place has become a nexus for truth seeking and reconciliation as Americans pursue a fuller understanding of their past.

Virginia Beach, author of American Landmark: Charles Duell and the Rebirth of Middleton Place, and Tracey Todd, President and CEO of Middleton Place Foundation, talk with Walter Edgar about Duel’s decision to preserve the family seat of his ancestors, and the journey toward its sustainability.

- Originally published 03/11/22 -

Hootie and the Blowfish(Micheal McLaughlin / Courtesy of the University of South Carolina Press)

In 1985, Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower at the University of South Carolina and asked him to form a band. For the next eight years, Hootie & the Blowfish—completed by bassist Dean Felber and drummer Soni Sonefeld—played every frat house, roadhouse, and rock club in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, becoming one of the biggest independent acts in the region.

In Only Wanna Be with You (2022, USC Press), Tim Sommer, the ultimate insider who signed Hootie to Atlantic Records, pulls back the curtain on a band that defied record-industry odds to break into the mainstream by playing hacky sack music in the age of grunge.

He chronicles the band's indie days; the chart-topping success—and near-cancelation—of their major-label debut, cracked rear view; the year of Hootie (1995) when the album reached no. 1, the "Only Wanna Be with You" music video collaboration with ESPN's SportsCenter became a sensation, and the band inspired a plotline on the TV show Friends; the lean years from the late 1990s through the early 2000s; Darius Rucker's history-making rise in country music; and one of the most remarkable comeback stories of the century.

Tim Sommer shares the Hootie story with Walter Edgar.

Interior of a crowded bar moments before midnight, June 30, 1919, when wartime prohibition went into effect New York City.(New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection / Library of Congress)

In her book, Baptists and Bootleggers: A Prohibition Expedition Through the South (2021, Evening Post Books) Kathryn Smith takes you to major cities and small towns, all of which struggled between the Baptists and their teetotaling allies who preached temperance and the bootleggers who got rich providing what their customers couldn’t buy legally.

Smith talks with Walter Edgar about her Prohibition expedition through hotels, bars, speakeasies, museums and cemeteries, and shares some vintage cocktail recipes she picked up along the way.

- Originally released 02/25/22 -

Dr. Constance Schulz, Distinguished Professor Emerita of the University of South Carolina’s Public History Program, joins Walter Edgar this week to talk about the importance of “public history” and how it has evolved as a field of study over the last 50 years. Schutz is the winner of the Robert Kelley Memorial Award from the National Council on Public History.She is currently at work on The Pinckney Papers Project – based on two digital documentary editions: The Papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry and The Papers of the Revolutionary Era Pinckney Statesmen – which explores one of our South Carolina’s most prominent families, specifically examining the importance of women's social connections and relationships during that time.

Dr. Constance Schultz, Distinguished Professor Emerita of the University of South Carolina’s Public History Program, joins Walter Edgar this week to talk about the importance of “public history” and how it has evolved as a field of study over the last 50 years. Schultz is the winner of the Robert Kelley Memorial Award from the National Council on Public History.She is currently at work on The Pinckney Papers Project – based on two digital documentary editions: The Papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry and The Papers of the Revolutionary Era Pinckney Statesmen – which explores one of our South Carolina’s most prominent families, specifically examining the importance of women's social connections and relationships during that time.

( pixhere.com)

Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, been bucked off horses, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives -- all in the name of finding a good story. He was won a record nine Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and has been called by Booklist magazine "among the best western writers at work today."

He joins Walter Edgar to talk about his career, his love of the American West, and about his new book, The Cobbler of Spanish Fort and Other Frontier Stories (2022, Five Star Publishing).

- (Originally broadcast 02/25/22) -

News and Music Stations: Fri, May 27, at 12 pm; Sat, May 28, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, May 27, at 12 pm; Sun, May 29, at 4 pm

(Alexandra Olgin)

Shrimp, one of our most delicious food sources, was once only considered worthy of bait. In her new book, Shrimp Tales: Small Bites of History (2022, Primedia eLaunch), author Beverly Bowers Jennings tells the fascinating story of the shrimp industry, from the shrimp boats and their captains to fishing family lore, tasty recipes and more.

Jennings talks with Walter Edgar about what she learned in a decade spent interviewing shrimpers and others associated with commercial shrimping to produce permanent exhibits for the Port Royal Sound Maritime Center and the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head. That work served as the basis of Shrimp Tales, a book that reveals the old ways of shrimping and celebrates today’s awakening about the foods we eat and the people who make it all happen.

Poster: Rural Electrification Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture( Library of Congress)

Early in the twentieth century, for-profit companies such as Duke Power and South Carolina Electric and Gas brought electricity to populous cities and towns across South Carolina, while rural areas remained in the dark. It was not until the advent of publicly owned electric cooperatives in the 1930s that the South Carolina countryside was gradually introduced to the conveniences of life with electricity. Today, electric cooperatives serve more than a quarter of South Carolina's citizens and more than seventy percent of the state's land area.

In his book, Empowering Communities: How Electric Cooperatives Transformed Rural South Carolina (USC Press, 2022), Dr. Lacy K. Ford and co-author Jared Bailey tell the story of the rise of "public" power – electricity serviced by member-owned cooperatives and sanctioned by federal and state legislation. It is a complicated saga, encompassing politics, law, finance, and rural economic development, of how the cooperatives helped bring fundamental and transformational change to the lives of rural people in South Carolina, from light to broadband.

News and Music Stations: Fri, May 13, 12 pm; Sat, May 14, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, May 13, 12 pm; Sun, May 15, 4 pm

(Florida Center for Instructional Technology (https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/)

“In the most barren inhospitable unhealthy part of North America, opposed by the most savage, inveterate perfidious cruel Enemy, with zeal and with Bayonets only, it was resolv’d to follow Green’s Army, to the end of the World.” So wrote British general Charles O’Hara about the epic confrontation between Nathanael Greene and Charles Cornwallis during the winter of 1780-81. Only Greene’s starving, threadbare Continentals stood between Cornwallis and control of the South—and a possible end to the American rebellion.

Daniel Morgan’s stunning victory at Cowpens over a superior British force set in motion the “Race to the Dan,” Greene’s month-long strategic retreat across the Carolinas. In constant rain and occasional snow, Greene’s soldiers—tracking the ground with their bloody feet—bound toward a secret stash of boats on the Dan River. Just before Cornwallis could close his trap, the Continentals crossed into Virginia and safety.

- Originally released 03/12/21 -