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Greer Then & Now - A PEEK INTO THE PAST w ritte n by SH E R I L BE N NE T T TURNER & photo g raphed by KRIS DECKER
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f you’re a fan of GreerNow magazine, you are probably already familiar with Joada Hiatt and Ray Belcher, two local historians who bring the past to life each month with their wonderfully detailed stories on the people, places, and things that make Greer so unique today. The two have been friends for years and, because of their mutual passion for history, have collaborated on a number of special projects such as their new book that hit the stores this September. Entitled Greer (Then & Now)—and published by Arcadia, the leading local history publisher in the United States—the book depicts in photographs and informative narrative, a snapshot of the way life was like in this area back then, in the early 1900s, compared to now, the early 2000s. Being an admirer of their work, as well as their dedication to Greer, I wanted to turn the tables on Joada and Ray, and interview the interviewers about their newest accomplishment.
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Q: Tell me a little bit about your backgrounds. Ray: I grew up in the Upstate, and have lived in either North or South Carolina all my life. It’s just something I’m familiar with. I’ve been an educator for something like 30-plus years and I teach college history. When it comes down to what I want to do on my days off it’s this, local history. I have this strange compulsion to find out more about local history. There’s no cessation to it. That is, there’s always something else I can learn. It’s sort of an offshoot of what I do for a living.
Joada: I came to South Carolina in 1964 to teach English at North Greenville, it was a junior college then. After teaching at two other colleges, my next career was as a stay-at-home mom and then my next career was the library. I was the manager of the Greer branch of the Greenville County Library System
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for 27 years until I retired. Then Carm Hudson called me and said, “Joada, I hear you’re retiring. Come over and keep the museum.” I’m interested in history, so I said yes.
Q: I know that you, Joada, were instrumental in helping the Greater Greer Chamber of Commerce put together a book called Greer (Images of America) which was published by Arcadia in 2000. This was mainly a pictorial with the intention of preserving historical photographs of the city. But, Ray, you and Joada collaborated on another book. Is that correct? Ray: Joada and I did a narrative history of Greer, which was called Greer: From Cotton Town to Industrial Center (Making of America series, Arcadia, 2003). This book was more oriented to just the history of the City of Greer; the business district, political institutions, what’s defined now as historic Greer. We didn’t cover the outskirts, the cotton mills, or the farms.
Joada: Ray gets the credit on that book. I was really pleased
Now we’d be taking pictures in the beginning of the twentyfirst century. Give it another century and future generations can look back and see two centuries worth of history in pictures.
Q: Where did you get the material for the new book? Ray: We already had a good deal of material, about half of the old pictures we had on hand from the Greer Heritage Museum and from contacts when we were doing the first book together. These people were able to provide a number of pictures that were different than the ones in the first book. We already had most of the narrative, too, it was just a matter of selecting the best captions for the pictures we used. We had to go out and take the pictures of the ones we used of today. Some of the current pictures were borrowed from other people, but the majority were taken by Joada’s husband, Alan, and me. We would go out, try to find a nice day when the sun was just right with good conditions for taking pictures. Some things were photographed many times before the quality was just right.
when he started that first book because the only histories on Greer that we found was one done in 1896 by a schoolteacher on the founding of Greer, and another one from 1927 called The Greer Annual that we think was done by a Chamber of Commerce for the city. We’re not sure because it didn’t really have an author, but it’s very valuable because it had a lot of early information. After that, there has been no one that has really collected the history, so I was really glad he started that project.
Q: Was it difficult getting some of the “now” pictures?
Q: Who’s idea was it to do this newest book, Greer (Then & Now)?
Joada (laughing): I remember one time we went out to
Joada: Our first book (Greer: From Cotton Town to Industrial Center) was out of print so I e-mailed Arcadia and asked if they were going to reprint. I had a lot of people asking about it, and the Chamber said they really wanted to keep it as a resource for people. They told me that they usually don’t reprint, but were we interested in doing another book for them. I think they offered us the chance because both of the previous Greer books had done very well. Arcadia works on series, set formats that they’ve been very successful with, and they offered the choice of two series, Postcards or Then and Now. We felt like we couldn’t come up with enough postcards for a whole book from a small community, plus we were worried about the quality of the ones we did have, so we chose Then & Now. When I thought about it, many of the pictures in the museum and the ones people had—the ones that we ended up using—were pretty much from the early twentieth century.
Ray: We learned a lot about photography—and patience. A lot of pictures had to be taken from across the road with heavy traffic. We tried to get pictures from the best angle, what was available. In some cases, it was no longer possible to get an angle the same as the original photo because a new building was in the way, or perhaps a highway had been put there. We tried to duplicate as best we could.
Pelham to take a picture, and when we found the street there was a sign that read NO TRESSPASSING. Well, I said “Heck, this is public property. You can go down streets.” So my husband pulls down the street and I said “Okay. This is where we are going to take the picture.” So he gets out of the car with the camera and there were these two pit bull dogs that start barking. They are on chains but he goes—Click! “That’s it, honey” —and jumps in the car. Well . . . I really wanted him to get a little bit down the street but that would have put him standing in the pit bulls’ yard. He said “No. I don’t think so. I love you, honey, but that’s it!” We also learned to dodge cars when standing in the middle of the street taking a picture, and that residents keep a watchful eye on you when you’re snapping photographs in their neighborhood.
Q: What do you hope to accomplish with your books? GreerNow NOVEMBER 2008
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Ray: I guess it’s our job to educate. There’s a core group of people in every community that love history and the publishers of local histories do a mighty fine job of making folks aware of their roots. They supply information that otherwise would be lost. I really believe that if you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know who you are. It’s a labor of love, I guess, or maybe selfinflicted pain, I don’t know which. Somewhere along those lines. It’s definitely not a way of gaining extra cash (grinning). And we aren’t perfect, we slip up now and then but we try to get things as accurate as possible.
Joada: These books are like a service to the community. We do it out of a love for Greer and its history and we have grandchildren and we want them to know what their roots are. We want the books to preserve what’s here so that other generations will know. We also want the newcomers to know what a fine town they’ve moved to. I think these books help translate our history and help people understand it.
Ray: Especially with the new book. If you can show your story at the same time you tell it, that’s the most effective. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Greer (Then & Now) is organized into five chapters—“Farms and Mills,” “Street Scenes and Residences,” “Trade and Business,” “Schools and Institutions,” and “Churches.” Included in the book’s 95 pages are pictures of the shot-gun-style homes of Greer Mill village, the old Greer City Hall building, originally a post office and soon to be the new home of Greer Heritage Museum, and the Greer Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, which stills looks today much as it did when erected in 1932. As part of the Introduction, Joada and Ray inscribed a sentiment that I think best sums up this book. It reads, Over the years, Greer has represented the small-town American spirit. While it cannot boast of famous names and faces, it represents the American Dream—people working hard, educating their children, expressing their faith in God, and always striving for a better future for themselves and their neighbors. This pictorial history uses images that show where the residents of Greer worked, shopped, lived, learned, and worshipped, and where they go about those same activities today. These pictures epitomize a century of life in Greer—a good place to live. d For more information on Greer (Then & Now), Arcadia, 2008, Greer: From Cotton Town to Industrial Center (Making of America), Arcadia, 2003 (in reprint), and Greer (Images of America), Arcadia, 2003, go to www.arcadiapublishing.com. These books can also be purchased locally as available.
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