MYRTLE BEACH — Two local products helped lead the North squad to victory in the 2016 Touchstone Energy North-South All-Star Bowl on Saturday in Myrtle Beach. 

Sue Whitmire Farmer was born at home in Pickens in 1945. She attended several grammar schools because her father, who was a sharecropper, moved his family to wherever he could farm. Sue graduated from Pickens High School in 1963. She attended Greenville Technical College, where she took secretary courses.

By Jason Evans
Staff Reporter

jevans@thepccourier.com

COUNTY — Last week’s county council meeting began with a special recognition of the council members who are moving on.

Unless a special called meeting is held, the meeting was the last county council meeting for council members Randy Crenshaw, Tom Ponder, Neil Smith and chairman Jennifer Willis.

• Pickens Lions plan meetings each month

The Pickens Lions Club is in need of new members. The club meets the first and third Thursday of every month at Pizza Inn in Pickens.

Dinner begins at 6:40 p.m., and the meeting starts at 7 p.m. Meetings are open to anyone interested in joining the club or simply finding out more about the club and how it serves Pickens.

• Master gardener class set for January

A 16-week master gardener course will meet each Monday, Jan. 23 through May 15 from 9 a.m.-noon in the main conference room of the S.C. Department of Natural Resources office. A copy of the S.C. Master Gardener Training Manual is included. In order to earn S.C. Master Gardener certification, participants will need to complete the training course and provide 40 hours of volunteer service. Registration closes on Jan. 13. Registration fee is $300. Enrollment is limited and is based on a first-come first-served basis. For more information or questions on the course offering, contact LayLa Burgess or visit clemson.edu/extension/mg/counties/pickens_oconee_anderson/index.html.

• Family Discovery Project set by 4-H

Those interested will be able to learn about their family history, customs and quirks in an online family project sponsored by 4-H. There are no meetings, and the project can be taken as fast or slow as participants wish.

Cost is $10 for 4-H families and $20 for non-4-H members. Contact Pickens County Extension at (864) 878-1394 to sign up.

CENTRAL — In the late 1970s, Innocent Nwankwo was one of two soccer players from Nigeria who were signed to a fledgling intercollegiate soccer program at Southern Wesleyan University.

When Dr. Keith Connor was soccer coach at Southern Wesleyan, then known as Central Wesleyan College, he received a call from Dr. I.M. Ibrahim, Clemson University’s head soccer coach. The NCAA changed the number of scholarships Clemson could offer, and Ibrahim was trying to place some of his players at other colleges. At that time, Connor could offer no soccer scholarships, but he approached Dr. Claude Rickman, who was president at the time, and P.B. Wood, the academic dean, to see what could be done.

“Dr. Rickman gave me the go-ahead to try to work it out,” Connor recalled. “Innocent Nwankwo and Paul Agu both wanted to stay in the area because of their Nigerian friends at Clemson, so they transferred over here and helped turn our program around.”

Innocent proved to be an outstanding offensive player, scoring 48 goals during his first year, a SWU record. Connor noted that Innocent would score as many as six goals during one game. He added that Agu was a good defensive player. They were good enough to help the Warriors finish third in the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) National Championships. Both players were also inducted into Southern Wesleyan’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Innocent looks back on his years at Southern Wesleyan with gratitude for how Connor treated him as a member of the family and also to Wood for his wise counsel.

“I am very grateful to Southern Wesleyan University for inducting me into the school’s Soccer Hall of Fame; that was the icing on the cake, and I will live to cherish Southern Wesleyan University all the days of my life,” Innocent said.

Sandra Ellison Morgan, a Southern Wesleyan University alumna, was a student when Innocent Nwankwo played on the men’s soccer team and was delighted to meet his daughter, Anita, during Homecoming. Anita is a current student at Southern Wesleyan majoring in biology. Innocent Nwankwo is pictured (right) with his wife, Esther, as he was named a chief and Knight of St. Mulumba in the Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria.

After graduating from Southern Wesleyan, Innocent returned to Nigeria to establish his career and raise his own family. He first worked for Adapalm, one of the largest palm oil companies in Africa. He went on to hold several management positions and was named general manager and CEO of Imo State Development Finance Investment Company, a post he held until his retirement in July 2014. Innocent was recently honored as a chief and knight of St. Mulumba, Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri, in Imo State, Nigeria.

Anita Nwankwo, the third of Innocent’s six children, enrolled at Southern Wesleyan in 2015, where she majors in biology and plans to someday enter medical school. Although Anita already had an electrical engineering degree from Imo State University, she had a longing to head down a different career path.

“My mom is a nurse, so I was influenced a lot by her,” Anita said, noting how she was inspired by watching her mother interact with people who sought her medical help. “Sometimes people would come to her house so she could check them up, because we don’t have EMTs, so when something happens you go to your closest neighbor. She would always go to those calls at night, and my daddy would accompany her. It was amazing that she was rendering these services to people. So, that’s what inspired me to go into medicine.”

Anita also grew up hearing Innocent share his memories of attending Southern Wesleyan.

“He would talk about the people he met here; he would talk about Coach Connor,” Anita said. “I would say that I knew Coach Connor before I met him, because he made such a huge impact in my daddy’s life, so my daddy would always talk about him. Coach Connor would push him and make him become more fit.”

Anita said her father would talk about how great the soccer team was and the fellowship he experienced as a player. Innocent also talked about a friend, Alexander Loggins, who would invite him to visit their home.

Anita wanted to study in the United States and had considered New York, since she had friends there; but Innocent wanted her to attend Southern Wesleyan, feeling this is a school he could trust for his daughter to attend.

Innocent Nwankwo (standing, second from left) in a 1978 Southern Wesleyan University men’s soccer team photo. Standing to his right is Paul Agu, who along with Innocent was recruited by Coach Keith Connor to play on the team.

“It was amazing when I first got here. I was like, ‘wow, my dad was here years ago!’ It gives me amazing feelings,” Anita said. “I would say it kind of brought us closer in a way, because we have the same birthday and now we went to the same school.”

“I and my entire family are overjoyed that Anita, our child, is now attending the very university I graduated from in the USA,” Innocent said. “As an intelligent child, I know she will cope very well in her academic pursuit.”

Anita feels that Southern Wesleyan’s faith-filled community is helping her spiritually, as her professors start classes with prayer and as God speaks to her during chapels.

“It gives you joy being able to go to chapel twice a week and hear the wonderful songs. You can’t help but be in that presence of God. It’s amazing that I have that opportunity to be able to worship with people and praise God and pray to God,” Anita said.

Anita spends her spare time tutoring other students, working for Pioneer — the university’s dining service — and watching soccer games.

Anita said of her father, “He made sure he sent us to college and we studied whatever we wanted to do. Even after five years of college he was still able to let me come here and start all over again. He is all for encouraging us and supporting us to be the best we can.”

During Homecoming this past October, Sandra Ellison Morgan, who attended the university at the same time as Innocent, met Anita at the lunch tent by chance and struck up a conversation that brought forth memories and delight that she followed her father’s footsteps to Southern Wesleyan.

“Anita’s dad has passed on a beautiful testimony to Anita of the joys he experienced during his SWU days,” Morgan said.

Online fundraiser launched to help pay for post-production

EASLEY — Easley native Aaron Ballard has created an original web series called “Brokers.”

Loosely based on her brief stint as a real estate agent in Manhattan, Ballard co-wrote and stars in the female-driven comedic series about the absurd world of real estate in NYC.

Ballard, who graduated from Easley High School, was active in both high school and community theatre productions at Easley Foothills Playhouse and Pendleton Playhouse. She relocated from South Carolina to New Jersey nine years ago to achieve her Masters of Fine Arts degree. Upon graduation, she moved to New York City, where she still lives, to pursue a career in acting.

The plot of “Brokers” mirrors Ballard’s real-life experience. When Ellen, played by Ballard, moves to the big city from her idyllic hometown in South Carolina, she joins a crew of misfit brokers at Awesome Apartments.

“As an actor, I have had quite a few supplemental jobs over the years, but my work with a certain real estate company stands out,” Ballard said. “I had some interesting coworkers. One of them had a Lifetime movie made about his sordid past. In the movie, he was the villain, so he rented apartments under an alias in case people had seen the movie and recognized him.

“Some of our listings were terrible. The first one I rented was a tiny room in the East Village with no kitchen and green carpet. It couldn’t even fit a bed. With all the fees and deposits, the renters paid close to $10,000 to secure the place. That disturbed me a bit.”

Ballard admits she didn’t last very long at the real estate company, but she did have ample experience to inspire her web series. However, her experience wasn’t the only thing driving her show.

“I knew I wanted to have as many women in charge as possible,” she said.

Ballard said women are traditionally underrepresented in the film and television industry, with a very small percentage of programming with female directors, cinematographers, writers and producers.

“I’m really proud of how many women are involved in this project,” she said. “We have a female director, writer, cinematographer and all but one of the producers are women. Stories with women in charge tend to be more female-centered in their storytelling, which is still quite rare in this male-dominated industry.”

The first season of “Brokers” was filmed over the summer in locations across New York City. Now, Ballard and her production team have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for post production. A sneak peak of their footage can be found on the fundraising page. The money will help them hire an editor to complete the show so that it can be released next spring on Vimeo and submitted to web festivals across the country.

The crowdfunding campaign can be found at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/brokers-a-web-show#/.