Former Sumterite shares tale from the abyss A8 PAT CONROY, 1945—2016
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SHS commemorates Bataan Death March
BBQ for Boy Scouts raises more than $6K BY ADRIENNE SARVIS adrienne@theitem.com Henry Shelor District of the Boy Scouts of America raised a little more than $6,000 for the Pee Dee Area Council during the 5th Annual Benefit BBQ for Boy Scouts competition on Saturday. The Henry Shelor District includes Sumter, Clarendon and Lee counties, and the money raised during the weekend will go toward Boy Scouts summer camp and the winter and fall “camporees”. Glenn Button, co-chairman of the barbecue event, said five out of the 14 teams that competed this year are from Sumter. He said other teams traveled from all across the state, including Rock Hill, Greenville, Anderson and Lake City. Button said there was a pretty good crowd during the events on Friday and Saturday, despite competing for attention with local sporting events. He said the local Boy Scouts troops were given a good deal of support from the community and received about $4,000 from sponsors. Button said two new vendors had been added to Saturdays competition, a mechanical bull and Snowie’s snow cones. He said a portion of the proceeds from both vendors will go to the Boy Scouts. There was also a car show at Saturday’s
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Sumter High School Air Force Junior ROTC cadets march around the perimeter of the school at last year’s Bataan Death March Remembrance. This year’s event will be held on Friday and Saturday, with all proceeds going toward the local chapter of the Disabled American Veterans organization.
Remembrance benefits Disabled American Veterans BY KONSTANTIN VENGEROWSKY konstantin@theitem.com Sumter High School’s Air Force Junior ROTC program will host its annual Bataan Death March Remembrance on Friday and Saturday outside the school, with all proceeds going toward the local chapter of the Disabled American Veterans organization. On April 9, 1942, in the middle of World War II, after a threemonth Battle of Bataan in the Philippines, 80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war were forced to march to an internment camp some 60 miles away. The Japanese Imperial Army forced the men to march with very little food or water and at times severe physical abuse. The incident was later judged by an Allied military commission to
be a Japanese war crime and became known as the Bataan Death March. About 10,000 men, 1,000 American and 9,000 Filipino, died during the march, according to www.bataanmuseum.com. Those who survived the march would spend as long as 40 months in horrific conditions in confinement camps. Sumter native Steve Barwick studied under a college professor, the late Luther Dewitte Bass, at South Georgia Junior College in Douglas, Georgia, who survived the march. Bass was subsequently imprisoned for more than three years and seven months. Bass made an American flag from parachutes carrying food and clothing that a B-29 bomber dropped on the camp on Aug. 26, 1945. In 1973, that flag was donated to the Truman Library in
Independence, Missouri. “Twenty-three years later, during my first days of college, I became his student, and he became my mentor,” Barwick said. “Mr. Bass turned my world.” Barwick said Bass never talked about his experience of being in the Bataan Death March, although all the students at the college knew about it. “I think today I appreciate even more his service and the sacrifices he made for our country,” Barwick said. “He was a very mild-mannered man who would go the extra mile for his students.” Barwick went on to serve in the Army himself, from 1967 to 1969. He served as an accountant and chief financial officer for Sumter Utilities for many years. About 70 cadets from Sumter
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KEITH GEDAMKE / THE SUMTER ITEM
Annah Beck rides a mechanical bull during the Boy Scout’s BBQ Cook-off at Sumter Civic Center on Saturday.
Descendant of slave who stole rebel ship named museum head BY BRUCE SMITH The Associated Press CHARLESTON — The great-great-grandson of a slave who commandeered a Confederate ship and took it to Union forces blockading the South Carolina coast is the new president and CEO of the planned $75 million International African American Museum in Charleston.
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Museum officials announced on Friday that Atlanta businessman Michael Boulware Moore, who has deep family roots in South Carolina, will head the museum, which officials hope will open in late 2018. Moore is a direct descendant of Robert Smalls, who made history by commandeering the steamboat Planter in 1862. Smalls later went on to
become a South Carolina congressman during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. The announcement was made at the planned site of the museum, the location of a former wharf on the Cooper River where tens of thousands of slaves first set foot in the United States.
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Atlanta businessman Michael Boulware Moore speaks to members of the media Friday at the site of a planned $75 million International African American Museum in Charleston. Moore, the great-great grandson of the slave Robert Smalls who commandeered a Confederate steamship and sailed it to Union forces during the Civil War, was named Friday as the first president and CEO of the museum expected to open in the fall of 2018. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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