Wiseman said, ‘I have mint juleps and 65 degrees in South Carolina.” The promise of that oh-so- Southern adult beverage staple and the Palmetto State’s warmer climes led Smith to agree to – at least – come and visit. Wiseman’s goal? To convince Smith that she was needed in Newberry and that she belonged there. Wiseman called Smith in the late 1990s, but his efforts to renovate and preserve the Newberry Opera House date to the 1970s, he said. “When all the (textile) mills closed in South Carolina, that left us with nothing but history. The only thing we had remaining in downtown Newberry was the opera house. City hall was in it, and the upstairs was vacant,” Wiseman said.įirst he tried to garner private funds to restore the opera house’s upstairs, but that effort didn’t go really well. Then in the 1990s, he was serving on the town’s city council and on the board of a local bank. The latter was talking about building a new main office and giving its old building to the city. “We conjured up the city to take the vacant building for city hall and that left the opera house vacant. “I said to the council, ‘This thing is just sitting there. Why don’t you give it to a foundation? Well, I had to start that foundation. We got 15 people together and the city said it would give the opera house to the foundation for $1.” I had some friends who were experts in that area: a great lawyer friend of mine, a guy in construction and a woman who had just moved here. Wiseman says he managed to pass on his passion for saving and restoring the opera house to the new foundation board.
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