By Greg Lucas
Special to the Courier
news@thepccourier.com

PICKENS — A remembrance for legendary game warden Franklin Gravely will be held Wednesday, Oct. 23, in northern Pickens County. The public is invited to attend the program.

The remembrance, an oral history, will begin at 9 a.m. in the parking lot of Holly Springs Country Store at 6491 S.C. Highway 11 is Pickens. Holly Springs Country Store is at the intersection of S.C. 11 and U.S. Highway 178. The remembrance will start in the upper parking

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lot closest to the volunteer fire department. After some introductory remarks, the remembrance will move uphill to the Holly Springs Baptist Church cemetery, where Gravely is buried. If road conditions are favorable, the remembrance will then travel to the Franklin Gravely Monument on Camp Adger Road in the Horsepasture, known officially as Jocassee Gorges.

The Franklin Gravely Remembrance has been held for the past decade as part of a Clemson University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) Jocassee Gorges class, but this year is being opened to the public. Mack “Houn’ Dawg” Erwin, another law enforcement legend who retired from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) in 2010 with more than 30 years of experience, will host the event. He is being joined by Dennis Chastain, a writer, naturalist and hunter who is a well-known Pickens County personality.

The remembrance will honor the life and legacy of Gravely, for whom the Franklin L. Gravely Wildlife Management Area was named in 1980. The monument honoring Gravely’s contribution to the conservation lands in northern Pickens County was unveiled July 9, 2012, at the Camp Adger helipad. The ceremony was held with a gathering that included Gravely’s family and his many admirers from Gravely’s years of service as a conservation officer between 1953 and 1988. Gravely died in 2000.

“He was as near to the perfect game warden as any that we have ever had,” then-SCDNR director Alvin Taylor said at the monument unveiling. “He was smart, fair and relentless. He was the ultimate woodsman. He found numerous lost individuals in the mountains. When someone was lost in the Table Rock Watershed or Horsepasture area, Franklin found them. He could track people and animals as well as anyone I have ever met.

“He was a fine person who lived his faith. I have rarely heard of anyone who did not like Franklin, even the violators that he caught,” Taylor said. “We are blessed to have had him as an officer, and I hope our current staff can follow his example of how to serve the people and wildlife of South Carolina.”

Gravely was instrumental in stocking deer and wild turkeys in the mountain region, as well as preserving black bear habitat, and he helped to protect conservation areas in the Upstate for future generations to enjoy. A South Carolina Wildlife magazine article called Gravely “a mountain man’s mountain man, a living legend throughout the rugged wilderness of northwestern South Carolina.”

For more information on the Franklin Gravely Remembrance, call Greg Lucas with SCDNR at (864) 380-5201 or send an e-mail to LucasG@dnr.sc.gov.

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