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City receives $1.6M in grants Money to be used for improvements to Sumter Opera House, other local projects BY ADRIENNE SARVIS adrienne@theitem.com Three of Sumter’s state officials presented four grants, with a combined total of $1.6 million, to Mayor Joe
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McElveen Friday morning in Sumter City Council Chambers. Rep. David Weeks, D-Sumter, Rep. G. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, and Sen. Thomas McElveen, D-Sumter, each presented grants to the city on behalf
of South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism to fund several projects in the area. The grants include: $750,000 for the development of a welcome center at Shaw Air Force Base; $100,000 for improvements to Sumter Opera House; $500,000 to start phase two of the Palmetto Tennis Center; and $250,000 to develop a monument park on Manning Avenue.
Weeks said the interaction on Friday represented the partnership between local and state officials of Sumter. People sometimes imagine politicians fighting when thinking about government officials but Sumter is the opposite, he said. He said the monument park will
SEE GRANTS, PAGE A7
Sumter High girls fall short in championship game
Wheeler of Bishopville vows to be more than ‘single-issue’ candidate BY JIM HILLEY jim@theitem.com Lee County attorney Will Wheeler has announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for South Carolina House of Representative’s District 50 in the June 14 Primary Election. Candidates may begin officially filing for the election at noon March 16, according to scvotes.org. Rep. Grady Brown, who has held the seat since 1985, recently announced he would not seek reelection. Brown is the longest serving member of the S.C. House of Representatives. Wheeler said his strength is his ability to work with people, and he thinks he can work well with members of the legislature. “I am not going to be a single-issue candidate,” he said. In his announcement, Wheeler said he grew up in the St. Charles area of Lee County and has lived in Bishopville since returning to practice law in Bishopville. Wheeler has been married to Keyes for 16 years and the couple have two children, Maddie, 13 and Jack, 9, the release announcing his candidacy said. Wheeler is a partner at the law firm of Jennings & Jennings, P.A. in Bishopville, and graduated from University of South Carolina School of Law in 1999, the release said. He began practicing with the Jennings firm in 2000. He has served for many years on the Lee County Disabilities and Special Needs Board and as chairman of the Lee County Democratic Party from 2002 until 2008, he said. Wheeler has also served on the Lee County Arts Council, the Foundation Board of Central Carolina Technical College and the Mid-Carolina Commission on Higher
SEE WHEELER, PAGE A7
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Sumter High School’s Kyra Wilson and Jessica Harris accept the runner-up trophy at the Colonial Life Arena in Columbia on Friday. Read more about the girls basketball team’s trip the state championship on page B1.
Craft’s cameras serve as long part of Anderson family celebrations BY ABE HARDESTY Anderson Independent-Mail ANDERSON — Forty-seven years after the photo, the work of Catherine Craft is vivid in Jan Vestal’s memory. “It was a picture of my three children at the time, riding in a tire,” Vestal said Feb. 25. Even more, she remembers that Craft, one of the few women in the profession at the time, brought a memorably different approach along with her camera. “She was willing to break away from the usual form of portraits, and that’s why we liked her from the start,” Vestal said. “We lived what
‘You only get one chance to do it right. If something goes wrong with your equipment, you can’t do the wedding over again.’ CATHERINE CRAFT Veteran photographer was considered out in the country at the time and had some horses, and the ideas she had were a perfect fit for
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our family.” That was on Craft’s first gig as a commercial photographer in 1969, and she earned a first-place award for that countryside portrait. The ideas, from within and outside the photography box, have been flowing ever since. It hasn’t been easy. Her Crafts Photography team typically triple-covers major events now, but in the early years of the more than 2,000 weddings she has photographed, Craft worked alone. “That was pressure,” Craft recalled from her downtown Anderson studio. “On one of the biggest, happiest days of
someone’s life, you needed it to be the best it could be.” That often gave Craft more anxiety than the wedding participants. “You only get one chance to do it right. If something goes wrong with your equipment, you can’t do the wedding over again,” Craft said. For additional stress, there was the matter of proving herself in a profession new to women. When Craft opened her shop at 1505 N. Main St. in 1969, she became the city’s first commercial photographer of her gender. “I was always nervous and keyed up on the day that I
SEE CAMERAS, PAGE A7
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