Home Care In York, SC

YORK — A nonprofit that helps lift people out of homelessness is operating at full strength again after damage from a spring storm closed its York headquarters for months, leaving it without a home of its own.

Tender Hearts Ministries marked the reopening of its main office on Blackburn Street with a ribbon cutting in front of a few dozen community members and local government officials on Aug. 12.

The charity provides shelter for hundreds of people transitioning out of homelessness annually, while also regularly supporting local families and seniors with food and other necessities.

But earlier this year, Tender Hearts was the one in need.

Heavy rain during a storm in early May caused the gutters at the organization’s main office on Blackburn Street to collapse, sending water pouring into the building.

“It was water rushing in,” said Ainslee Moss, founder and president of Tender Hearts. “I describe it as a Hawaiian waterfall.”

In a matter of minutes, she said, several inches of water soaked the floors and sheetrock. By storm’s end, nine offices were ruined. Staff happened to be on site that night hosting a volunteer event and were able to save the computers on each desk.

“Everything else was lost. It was all waterlogged,” Moss said. “They had to rip everything out. We were down to the bare walls.”

The office was forced to close, but Moss said their invaluable work couldn’t afford to take a pause.

Staff spread out across the county to Tender Hearts’ warehouses and thrift stores. Closets became temporary workspace where employees continued to accept applications from those in need of assistance.

“We are a Christian organization, so we clung to Romans 8:28,” Moss said. “We know God has a purpose and a plan. He works things for our good and we were broken, but we were determined that it wasn’t going to stop us from doing our job.”

It didn’t take long for their faith to be tested again — this time by the insurance company.

Weeks after the storm, Moss learned the damage wouldn’t be covered. According to her insurance provider, plans don’t exist for damage caused by gutters.

Instead, Tender Hearts would be left to cover the bill on an already tight budget.

“We were very devastated,” Moss said. “It made the situation worse. Our emotions were all over the place.”

Moss said she quietly put word of their need into the community, and York stepped up.

She estimated they received more than $30,000 in donations, with more still expected. Tender Hearts also received donations of furniture and supplies.

“The Lord raised up people, church bodies, individuals, businesses, who donated their time, they donated their resources, they gave monetarily,” Moss said.

With all the support, they were able to make the necessary repairs to reopen after just three months, an accomplishment that brought the community out to celebrate.

The York County Regional Chamber brought the customary big scissors and Moss cut the ribbon on her nonprofit’s renovated home.

“I’d like to welcome Tender Hearts back,” York Mayor Mike Fuesser said during the short ceremony. “I know they didn’t go anywhere, but the mission that they perform in this community is a valuable mission. We are happy to have you back in this building and your offices clean and ready.”

Now, Moss said, Tender Hearts has a space that feels like their own, created and customized to the needs of the staff and the thousands of clients they serve in York County and beyond.

A new solar cell manufacturing facility opened in South Carolina this year with no fuss and much fanfare.

That company is not Silfab Solar, the beleaguered Canadian manufacturer that’s fought opposition left and right as it prepares to open a Fort Mill plant.

Locals in Fort Mill staged protests. They inspired two bills at the Statehouse. They commissioned billboards lambasting the company.

They even took Silfab to court — a case that’s pending and could determine whether the company gets booted after sinking tens of millions of dollars into the property.

About two hours southwest lies a much different story.

When ES Foundry opened its solar cell manufacturing facility in unincorporated Greenwood County, situated roughly between Columbia and Greenville, residents flooded the company with interest and support. It’s already snagged a national award celebrating its positive impact.

Trentsie Williams, the CEO of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, said the area has been nothing but receptive. The company created hundreds of jobs and brought new life to a facility that’s been vacant for several years, she said.

“Usually when they’re creating jobs, unless there’s some huge environmental issue, most people are OK with new employers coming to town,” Williams said. “Typically you don’t get a lot of pushback from a large fraction of your community not welcoming a company.”

So, why have two South Carolina facilities in the same line of business received such different reactions?

History and demographics offer a partial explanation.

Both communities relied on manufacturing to prop up their local economies before diverging near the turn of the century.

An influx of transplants caused Fort Mill’s population to swell by more than 126 percentage points since 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Greenwood County’s population increased by less than one percentage point over the same time period.

Many Fort Mill residents today arrived long after its textile mills closed and the town transitioned to other sectors. But manufacturing is still the number one employment sector in Greenwood and accounts for one quarter of its labor force, according to James Bateman, the county’s economic development director.

“It’s a heavily industrialized community in some areas,” Bateman said. “There is a strong textile heritage in Greenwood. As the textile industry faded, modern technologies led to investments in advanced materials firms we have today.”

ES Foundry opened just as another long-time factory closed. Hundreds lost their jobs, Bateman said, including 200 direct employees and 100 contractors.

The companies worked together to facilitate new roles for displaced employees so they could walk straight into ES Foundry without ever missing a paycheck, Bateman said.

About 100 of their current employees came from the closed factory, ES Foundry CEO Alex Zhu said. The company will employ 500 people once fully staffed.

“Greenwood is not a big city,” Zhu said. “Every job in that location (is) important, and any of the factories (closing) will have significant impact on the local community … We helped to reduce the impact.”

Trade & Industry Development magazine honored ES Foundry with a Corporate Investment and Community Impact award in May. That same month, Fort Mill residents protested outside of a York County Council meeting to demand officials revoke Silfab’s permits.

Silfab will create an estimated 800 jobs.

Zhu traveled across the country to find the right location, he said. That included the Silfab site in Fort Mill, which was a vacant distribution warehouse at the time.

It wasn’t ideal.

The building was an empty shell that would take a full year to connect to utilities, he said. ES Foundry would have to work from scratch to upfit the facility to handle wastewater treatment, gas and chemicals.

By contrast, the Greenwood site had most infrastructure already in place because it housed a heavy industrial company for decades, Zhu said.

“A good site means less investments, more ready to go,” Zhu said.

Only eight months passed from the day ES Foundry signed a lease to the day it opened, Bateman said. ES Foundry did not receive any tax breaks or economic incentive deals from the county.

To date, Silfab has spent more than $100 million to upfit the facility, according to the company. Silfab is still working to open after more than a year of preparations.

County officials actively recruited Silfab to Fort Mill. York County Council approved a 30-year tax rate incentive at about half the typical manufacturing rate, and Silfab also received a $2 million state economic development grant.

Silfab leaders saw “strong potential” in the local workforce. And unlike ES Foundry, Silfab considered the emptiness of the site a plus.

“The size and layout of the facility were key factors—it offered the square footage needed for our planned production capacity, sufficient loading docks, and a clean shell that gave us flexibility during construction,” the company said in a statement.

The crux of the Silfab controversy is zoning.

Silfab sits near homes and restaurants and next door to two future schools, one of which will open this fall to more than 800 students. York County zoning staff determined in 2022 that solar cell manufacturing was allowed in light industrial areas such as the site of Silfab’s 7149 Logistics Lane facility. Silfab obtained permits and began construction with that understanding.

But in May 2024, the York County Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously determined solar cell manufacturing was not allowed in light industrial areas. The county soon issued a statement saying that ruling only applied to future construction — not to Silfab. County planners don’t have to answer questions about why they approved Silfab for the area.

The company has sustained a community pressure campaign ever since trying to force it out of town.

“Silfab has worked closely with all local, regional and federal government agencies and authorities to ensure that the Fort Mill facility met or exceeded all requirements and provided a benefit to the community as well as economic prosperity and growth of the region,” Silfab said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that a small group initiated a deliberate misinformation campaign that has generated fear and misunderstanding among some members of the community trying to overshadow the significant benefits associated with this investment and endorsement in the region.”

Fort Mill residents organized into the “Move Silfab” movement and targeted several chemicals, such as hydrochloric acid and silane, they said were inappropriate to use so close to schools.

They consulted a group of pediatric environmental health specialists, who agreed the types and quantities of chemicals Silfab will use warrant a closer look, and commissioned the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health to study potential health risks.

Silfab maintains the building’s light industrial zoning aligns with its operational needs, and no schools were in the immediate area at the time the company was approved.

Zoning was never an issue for ES Foundry, Zhu said. His company operates in an area with a different zoning designation.

ES Foundry inherited a facility zoned for heavy industrial operations and surrounded by other factories. ES Foundry is miles away from the nearest school and sits in a relatively rural pocket of Greenwood County.

“It’s nothing new to have a factory there versus a newly proposed facility being constructed that is in a nonindustrial area, in a part of town where residents aren’t accustomed to it,” Bateman said.

Arthur Lowry, who turns 91 next weekend, devoted his lifetime to public education. But the York native won’t spend his Friday nights cheering on his alma mater this fall. He won’t catch a school play or a basketball game there.

That’s because Lowry’s alma mater, Jefferson High School, isn’t there anymore.

“That was the story of my life,” he told The Herald. “My high school got wiped away. The junior college I attended got wiped away. The high school where I worked in Rock Hill got wiped away. Everywhere I went to got wiped away. It got to be a way of life with me. It was one of those things you just had to accept.”

Thousands of Black students attended Jefferson High from 1888 to 1970. The school operated on West Jefferson Street starting in 1903, and relocated to a Rosenwald building on Pinckney Street in 1924. Integration moved Jefferson students to what’s now York Comprehensive High School by 1971.

On Saturday morning, a new historical marker honoring Jefferson High will be unveiled on Pinckney Street. An alumni group, Jefferson Remembered, partnered with York County’s Culture & Heritage Museums and the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission to create it.

The goal is to stir the collective memory of Jefferson High in the community, not just put up a sign.

“I’m looking a little bit beyond that,” said Phyllis Moore Ward, president of Jefferson Remembered.

For Lowry, a 1951 graduate, the ceremony will add an important piece to the city’s history — and his. “It’s a different feeling when you look at a school that you attended,” he said. “All you’ve got is memories. No building, no nothing there, just empty spaces. It has a lot of effect on you, if you think about it.”

Jefferson High memories

The son of a brick mason, Lowry attended the former Friendship Junior College in Rock Hill and Benedict College in Columbia. He served 32 years in the Army, most of them as a reserve.

Lowry’s career as a social studies teacher, coach and administrator included six years at the all-Black Emmett Scott High in Rock Hill before integration. He worked at what’s now Castle Heights Middle School for 20 years after schools were desegregated, then nine more at Rock Hill High School.

School went from first- to 11th-grade in Lowry’s day. Jefferson High added its first senior class a couple of years before he graduated.

“I was glad,” Lowry said. “Because back then, for Blacks anyway, nobody had any jobs around here. There was farming and that type stuff. It was either school or mule. You choose which one you think you’d rather have.”

Lowry recalls a large brick elementary building and a four-room wooden high school. Jefferson didn’t have a school bus until his junior year. “All the other times we walked,” Lowry said. “Rain, shine, sleet or snow.”

Some students rode bikes up to five miles to get to school. Attendance dipped when the weather got bad. Students in more distant spots like rural Hickory Grove or Sharon, simply didn’t go to Jefferson.

“If their parents wasn’t fortunate enough to have a car for them to come to school, they didn’t come to school,” Lowry said. “They had no way to get there. It’s too far to walk.”

For students who made it, Jefferson was an invaluable part of the community, he said.

Lowry remembers Friday night sock hops and sports rivalries with other all-Black schools like Emmett Scott, Roosevelt High in Clover and George Fish School in Fort Mill. Apart from balcony seats for a movie at the Sylvia Theater, school was about the only social gathering spot in town.

“The school and the church were the only two places that we had to go,” Lowry said. “Back then, for Blacks, if it didn’t happen at school or church, it didn’t happen. That was it.”

Lowry also remembers teachers who cared deeply about students. Back then, teachers would come to the house at report card time to deliver grades.

“You sit there with bated breath hoping you got a good report,” Lowry said. “Because at my house, if I got a bad report I knew what the deal was going to be when the teacher left.”

Facilities and supplies weren’t the best, he said, but teachers worked with them.

A science lab that might’ve had one microscope and a few frogs to dissect, he said, produced graduates who succeeded in all sorts of fields, science included.

“They did a marvelous job,” Lowry said. “With the resources that they had to offer us, we were able to go out and compete with kids from other areas that had a whole lot more than what we had.”

Students key to York integration

Lowry’s long career in education taught him something, that often students can sort out problems quicker than parents can.

With integration, York brought its Green Dragon mascot. Jefferson had Blue Devils and kids from Hickory Grove had been Cardinals. The integrated school rotated mascots by sport season for a while.

“The kids got together and decided they were Cougars,” Lowry said, “and that was the best thing that could’ve happened.”

While at Jefferson, Lowry and classmates would leave in the afternoon and follow the railroad track around to York High. They’d meet up to fight.

“And then we’d play baseball against each other,” Lowry said. “And it’d go pretty good until there was a little close play or something, and then the fight would start. But nobody got hurt. Nobody had guns or knives or anything like that. Just a little fist brawl. It was common during that time.”

There weren’t size classifications for schools like Jefferson, so teams played much larger schools in Spartanburg or Union counties.

Still, Jefferson for a time was a basketball powerhouse. More than 20 years before schools integrated, Lowry said, a principal at Jefferson High proposed a basketball game against all-white York as a school fundraiser.

“Some of the people on the school board wanted to run him out of town for even coming up with such a weird idea,” Lowry said.

Jefferson students trade rules, rivalries

Karen Lowry is the only child of Arthur and his late wife Rubye. Karen went to Jefferson for six years, then to York schools for six more after integration.

“It was a little scary at first,” Karen Lowry said.

At Jefferson, she couldn’t write on the backs or margins of notebook paper. At York she could. At York, students weren’t required to cover their text books every year.

“That was just about like Santa Claus coming, right there,” Karen Lowry said.

Girls had to wear dresses — no pants — at Jefferson and boys had to tuck in their shirts. Karen Lowry also remembers Jefferson cheerleaders bringing some of their cheers to York ballgames. Integrated schools meant swapping rivalries with Emmett Scott or Roosevelt for other ones.

“Clover, we did not let beat us,” Karen Lowry said. “That was a no-no.”

Before going on to a second career with Duke Energy, she’d work for many years in education like her father. Karen Lowry had at stops in York, Rock Hill, Chester and, yes, Clover.

Segregation difficult in York

Arthur Lowry smiles as he recounts his youth, but not because it was easy. Like other areas throughout the South, York was heavily segregated.

“You rode the back of the bus, if you rode the bus,” he said. “Back of the train if you rode the train. Even when you had the Christmas parade, they’d give out those little Christmas packages. The white kids went to the front of the courthouse to get their bags. We went to the back of the courthouse to get our bags.”

York had few mills and they hired few Black people, he said. Most people he knew had a little money in September or October, and lived off credit the rest of the year. That’s because most of them worked on farms.

“I talk to school classes and they ask me if we had field trips,” Arthur Lowry said. “I said yeah. We went to the cotton field, the corn field. Those were the only fields.”

After World War II, many Black people left the area. They didn’t get paid much in the service, Arthur Lowry said, but it beat farming the fields. He spent time in New York and California himself, but didn’t care for city life. Many people he knew moved to bigger cities up north or out west.

“It took a lot of the know how from the community,” Arthur Lowry said. “A lot of the brighter students, they left.”

York history important to remember

Arthur Lowry thinks of a segregated past in light of the present. Some people want to erase a past that can’t be erased, he said.

“You can’t change history,” Arthur Lowry said. “It’s there, whether you like it or not. It’s there. It’s going to be there. Best thing to do is take it and move on.”

So, why is some historical marker important, all these years after Jefferson High closed?

“You’ve got to know the past to figure out how you got the way you are now,” Arthur Lowry said. “And if you know how you got to where you are now, you can figure out where you’re going in the future. It’s one step after another.”

For him, Jefferson High remains one of the most important steps on that journey.

“As I look back at those years,” Arthur Lowry said, “I wouldn’t trade anything for them.”

Want to go?

The Jefferson High marker will be unveiled at 11 a.m. Saturday on Pinckney St. in York. Pinckney will be closed near the U.S. 321 and S.C. 49 intersection. Parking will be available near 16 Spruce St. and at 37 Pinckney St. behind York One Academy.