Paul Garfinkel, member and past president of the Orthodox Brith Sholom Beth Israel Synagogue (BSBI) in Charleston, South Carolina, talks about events leading to the formation of Congregation Dor Tikvah in 2012 by former members of BSBI. He notes that the idea of moving the synagogue out of the downtown area was a topic of discussion even before he took his first position on the BSBI board as recording secretary in 1973. Leaders of the synagogue on Rutledge Avenue resisted moving but did allow the establishment, in 1965, of the South Windermere Minyan House, in association with BSBI. The Minyan House, located in the South Windermere subdivision just across the Ashley River from downtown Charleston, was home to many Jewish Charlestonians who had moved off the peninsula to the suburbs in the 1950s. Decades later, a number of observant Jewish families had settled in the neighborhoods surrounding the Jewish Community Center (JCC), which in 1966 had relocated west of the Ashley—too far to walk to BSBI or the South Windermere Minyan House. Paul describes the efforts of Ben Chase, president of BSBI from 2004 to 2006, to lead the congregation in settling the question of whether to move. The vote, which took place right after Chase's term ended, found that a slim majority of congregants wished to stay downtown. Besides wanting to have a synagogue nearby, some members who lived near the JCC were dissatisfied with how the congregation was being run. They felt decisions were being made by a select few in leadership positions. In 2006, they formed the West Ashley Minyan (WAM). A few BSBI congregants tried to find a way for the WAM to become a second minyan associated with BSBI, but members of WAM found the conditions required by synagogue leaders too difficult to meet. Paul discusses reasons some BSBI members did not want to move the synagogue. One person, who lived a block from the downtown synagogue, was determined it would not move. He was "such a powerful force in the congregation that people did not want to go against him personally." Another strong factor has been sentimental attachment to the building itself. Paul remains a member of BSBI, remarking that he was "literally brought up in that building," and he thinks "it's important to keep the family tradition going." However, he points to the depletion of BSBI's financial resources. Although membership is declining, the congregation continues to spend large amounts of money to repair ongoing structural problems on the property. He believes a small city like Charleston will be unable to support two Orthodox synagogues and would like to see the congregations reunited. See transcript for a correction made by the interviewee during proofing.
Born in Charleston, SC on September 11, 1976 and raised in nearby Pinopolis, Lindsay Holler is a singer, composer, and guitar player who has additionally been a strong advocate for local musicians and a fixture of the music scene. In this interview she recalls her musical influences, including her parents’ mainstream pop records and her brother’s enthusiasm for the Black Crows. In addition to playing flute in the middle school band and taking piano lessons, Holler also studied voice with opera singer June Bonner. That association led to a visit to Broadway at age 13, where she saw Gregory Hines and Phylicia Rashad in Jelly’s Last Jam. “I kind of fell in love with New York a little bit, and I was like, oh, man, that’s where I want to go,” Holler recalls. Following her high school graduation, Holler studied jazz at the Berklee College of Music before returning to Charleston to complete her musical education at the College of Charleston. She has recorded and performed with several locally-based groups, including the Dirty Kids, the Western Polaroids, and Matadero. Though often in the spotlight as the lead singer, Holler is ambivalent about the attention that it brings her and worries that that ambivalence may undermine her success: “Everybody is me, me, me, show me, let me show you, you know, it’s such a prevalent posture nowadays, where it’s in your face, and who’s going to be the loudest, and who is going to be the most out there, and that’s never been my thing. But I worry do you have to be like that in order to be successful?”
Rhonda Jones (1970) is a sanitation worker for the City of Charleston, South Carolina. Having grown up in Brooklyn, New York; Rhonda moved south as a teenager to care for her ailing grandparents. A self-described outspoken and aggressive "Northerner," Jones had trouble assimilating into the slowness of life in the Lowcountry. In this interview, she recalls her life as a teenager displaced in Charleston and her efforts to provide for her children. In 2000 Jones applied for employment with the City of Charleston and became one of the first women that worked in sanitation as collector. In a traditionally male dominated environment she faced multiple challenges that included sexual harassment due both being a women and being a lesbian. Furthermore, Jones articulate the struggles that all sanitation workers, regardless their gender, face in their battle for better working conditions and the right to organize a union. At the time of the interview Jones was very involved with Local 1199, an organizing body fighting for the formation of a sanitation workers' union.
Mary Ann Sullivan (b. 1944) was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. She attended the College of Charleston and then the University of Georgia where she graduated with an M.A in Classics. Sullivan worked as a teacher for a few years and in 1976 joined the Mayor’s Office of the City of Charleston as a grant writer. She became Mayor Joseph P. Riley executive assistant and continued working with him until his retirement in 2016. In the interview, Sullivan remembers growing up in Charleston and the events that contributed to her early political interests. She also talks about her experiences working with Mayor Riley through critical moments in the history of the city such as the development of the Charleston Place, Hurricane Hugo, the annexations of Daniel Island and James Island, the Sofa Super Store fire and the Mother Emanuel massacre. Sullivan reflects about Riley’s leadership style and his inclusion of minorities in government. Finally, she talks about her decision to retire and her plans for the future.
Arlington Sanford was born on December 21, 1923, in Danbury, Connecticut. He joined the Navy shortly after graduating from high school. After boot camp in Newport, Rhode Island, he went to diesel school in South Richmond, Virginia, and graduated as a Fireman First Class. He was then assigned to landing ship tank (LST-307) in Boston, Massachusetts. He shipped out of New York on St. Patrick's Day in 1943 and took part in the Sicilian Occupation, the Salerno Landings, and the Normandy Invasion. Sanford describes his close relationship with Jack Junior Faughn, Boatswain's Mate Second Class from Peoria, Illinois: We were closer than brothers. We were inseparable; everywhere we went together, all through the war and did the same thing. LST-307 was struck hard by German guns during the Normandy invasion off Sword Beach. Upon impact Sanford sped to the main deck where he found Faughn's badly injured body. I kind of held him and took care of him for a while, until the corpsman came, Sanford recalled. That's the last I ever saw him.
Fleming was born in Charleston, South Carolina on 8 January 1922. To help support his family following the death of his father, Fleming joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1939 through which he worked on Bull’s Island. He recalls the Charleston of his childhood: “We didn't have but one street, Spring Street, to go across the old Ashley River Bridge . . . . right back where the stadium is at, all that was the river.” Fleming married and was drafted in 1942. He attended basic training at Camp Sibert, Alabama, where he “learned how to take care of myself through that army life, I learned a lot because when you hit them beach head, there ain’t nobody there to help you, you got to help yourself.” In Hawaii, he received training that prepared him for work as a medic on ship hospitals and in field hospitals in the Pacific. He recalls many harrowing scenes of battle and details life in foxholes during Japanese air attacks. Returning to Charleston after the war, Fleming worked in carpentry and construction, and played baseball for the Avco Corporation team. He concludes by reflecting on the September 2011 death of his wife of 69 years, Dorothy Buckingham Fleming, whose grave he visits weekly: “I go up there and look at the grave, and I got a little clipper, you know, like the stone, and I cut around it and take the brush and brush it all off.”
William Bendt was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1920. As a teenager, he withdrew from Murray Vocational High School to work at the White Swan laundry. He began working at the Naval Shipyard as a classified laborer when he was eighteen years old and soon transferred to an office position that he held for the rest of his civil service career. In this interview, Bendt recalls seeing Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the president’s visit to the shipyard. “I got within thirty feet of President Roosevelt, watching him come down that gangplank, and out of that back seat, projected out where he could sit down, and then went back in. And I really appreciate that I got to see him real close.” Bendt’s supervisors procured two draft deferments on his behalf, but they were unable to secure a third deferment. Upon joining the Army, he attended basic training at Fort Jackson (Columbia, South Carolina), infantry training at Camp Wheeler (Macon, Georgia), reported to Fort Meade (Baltimore, Maryland), and was sent to Camp Shanks (New York) before shipping out of New Jersey. “Before going aboard, the Red Cross came along and gave us all a little green bag with toiletries, what have you,” Bendt recalled. “I have that bag today and a little container of milk.” Assigned to the Second Army Division in France as a replacement, Bendt arrived on the continent on D-Day plus six. Bendt discusses his brief captivity at the hands of the Germans, while in combat along the Rhine River. After the war, Bendt met Russian soldiers in occupied Berlin. Returning to Charleston after the war, he resumed his work at the Naval Shipyard in the Public Works Department, where he accumulated over thirty-six years of service.
Henry Berlin was born August 19, 1924, in Charleston and enrolled at The Citadel in 1941. After enlistment and training, Berlin eventually served as a radar operator on an LST during the early Normandy landings. After the war he studied law at the University of South Carolina for two years and returned to work at Berlin's clothing store on the corner of King and Broad Streets in Charleston, SC. Berlin details his brief but rebellious tenure at the Citadel before going on active duty in May 1942. He describes how this rebellious streak ended his naval officer training in Columbia, SC, and how he was shipped to Maryland for boot camp. He discusses how he eventually became a radar operator on an LST ferrying troops and material across the English Channel in the days and months after D-Day. He relates harrowing trips across the channel, being targeted by German artillery during the early landings on Normandy, and the loss of troops as they disembarked from the LST in rough seas. After V-E day he describes his return to the US, his trip through the Panama Canal and his arrival at Pearl Harbor just before V-J day. He also touches upon his immediate post-war life including law school, a brief stint playing semi-pro baseball and return to his father's clothing shop in Charleston. Audio with transcript.
Robert S. Adden was born 1 January 1923 in Orangeburg, SC, and enrolled at The Citadel in 1940. He went on active duty with his class of 1944 classmates at the end of their 1943 spring semester, first to basic training at Fort McClellan, AL, and then to 18 weeks of Infantry Officer Candidates School at Fort Benning, GA. His regiment was shipped overseas to England for a month and then to Germany, where they were attached to the British Second Army and became engaged in combat in an attack on the Siegfried line a month before the Battle of the Bulge. After the war he earned an M.B.A. and Ph.D., and returned to The Citadel as a faculty member and administrator until he retired. He received an honorary degree in 2008 in a ceremony that honored the class of 1944, "the class that never was." Adden describes how his Citadel class (1944) was called to active duty at the end of their spring semester in 1943. He describes basic training in Fort McClellan, AL, and his stint in Officer Candidates School in Fort Benning, GA. Commissioned a second lieutenant in May 1944, he began training with the Eighty-fourth Infantry Division at Camp Claiborne in Louisiana where he became a mortar platoon leader. His regiment was shipped to Europe and was attached to the British Second Army during the Rhineland campaign. Adden discusses his first major combat experiences in November, 1944, when his battalion was assigned to secure the town of Prummern, Germany. Shot 5 times in the streets of Prummern, Adden describes how he played dead for hours as German troops and tanks passed beside him. He recalls stumbling to an American aid station after the streets cleared followed by hospital stays in Europe and the US. He returned to active duty in August 1945. Adden also touches briefly on his life and education after the war. Audio with transcript.
A native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Adams recalls his WWII experiences and decision to enlist in the Navy as a seventeen year-old. Adams was assigned to the USS Duchess, which primarily served as an attack transport carrier. His most vivid combat experiences came in off-loading troops during the battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Although stationed in the boiler room of the transport, he went topside during part of the unloading and helped carry one of the wounded men aboard ship. After returning home from the war he graduated from The Citadel (1950) and capitalized on his entrepreneurial spirit, founding his own blueprint business as well as Charleston Yacht Sales until he retired from his real estate business, which his daughters continue to run in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.
