Local officials joined the relatives of the late state Supreme Court Chief Justice and Manning native Taylor Hudnall Stukes on Tuesday afternoon to rededicate the Clarendon County Courthouse after more than 2.5 years of renovations.
Though the courthouse technically reopened in 2015, local historians and county officials wished to hold the actual dedication and ribbon cutting on the building’s 106th anniversary, which was Tuesday.
“Today, we come together to honor this grand facility for what it stands for now and for what it stood for 100 years ago: Justice and Equality for all in Clarendon County,” said County Administrator David Epperson.
Presbyterian Church at Manning Pastor George Wilkes dedicated the building with an opening prayer, saying, “As this facility fills with the light of day may Your spirit also fill it in hopes of justice and equality for all who come through these doors.”
Clarendon County Administrator Dwight Stewart said the courthouse needed repairs after some “nine decades of deterioration.”
“In 1962, then-President John Fitzgerald Kennedy challenged our national conscious at Rice University in a speech, saying that we should seek to put a man on the moon and should do so by the end of the decade,” Stewart said. “He said no challenge would be any easier, but that we do hard things because they are hard.”
Likewise, Stewart said, the county approached the courthouse’s renovation the same way.
“We could have just torn down this building and built a new one, and that likely would have been the easiest thing to do from a construction standpoint,” Stewart said. “But we did not do that. As the new century rolled into Clarendon County, we found the courthouse upon which we stand needing some repairs. Those 90 years had taken their toll.”
Stewart said that “brick and mortar, as we all know, just doesn’t last, and we have to fix it.”
Of course, the first thing the county had to do was figure out how to pay the bill for renovations, Stewart noted. Again, he looked to history for what would turn out to be a bittersweet solution.
“Sept. 22, 1989, brought something to Clarendon County that we never in any way could have thought would benefit this county,” Stewart said. “Hurricane Hugo devastated Clarendon County, including these very courthouse grounds.”
Stewart said it was estimated by forestry officials like himself that Clarendon lost at least 10 years of timber on the ground.
“Now move forward to 2006, when Grant Forest Products decided they would locate here,” Stewart said. “They chose Clarendon County because of the abundant resources of pine trees that have regenerated.”
The county ultimately used the revenue stream generated from a fee-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with Grant – and subsequently Georgia Pacific when that company took over Grant’s existing facilities – to fun the courthouse renovations and the building of the county’s administration center on Sunset Drive.
“That allowed us to completely redo the courthouse,” he said. “We stand here today in thanks of many people, including all those folks who worked in the cold and heat and the rain. And all those employees that were inconvenienced and worked in cramped conditions in other buildings while the courthouse was being completed. And also to residents who had to find those new places and deal with those temporary changes.”
Stewart said that those who gathered Tuesday stood “joining hands with those across the decades who met here 100 years ago.”
“I hope in another 100 years there will be another celebration here,” Stewart said.
