Narrative

The summer after Peyton Wooldridge of Chester, S.C. graduated from Mary Baldwin University in 1968, two of her female classmates went to Vietnam to serve during the war. One of those classmates wrote to her, encouraging her to also come and serve, saying, “This will change your life.”

Upon graduating at age 17 in June of 1967, Michael Richardson pondered his future and longed for a career. In December of that year, he decided to enlist in the U.S. Army, where his training began in January 1968 at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was there that Richardson had his first experience working in snowy conditions.

Karen Kustafik is a City of Columbia Park Ranger. She and her friend, Margaret Clarkson, met and bonded over their love for Columbia’s natural resources, and in particular, its system of rivers, which flow through the heart of the city.

William Justice and Taylor Gilliam began their friendship in 2017 as client and attorney. Since his early childhood in West Columbia, Justice had experienced several arrests and incarcerations.

At the turn of the 20th century, the South Carolina State Farmers Market was simply known as “Columbia’s City Market,” located on Assembly Street. It was there that George Oswald and his family labored daily, arriving before the sun rose, then packing up well past sundown.

While friends Chiara Cox and Elen Callahan did not grow up together, they share a similar journey. They were both born in the Philippines, but eventually moved to the United States. Although they sought to assimilate into their new American culture, they began to long for the people and traditions they had once known in their youth.

When Harriet Hancock's middle child, Greg, came out to her as gay, she instantly accepted and supported him. But she learned that his friends who were gay had not received the same kind of acceptance as she had given her son.

After three months of explosive ordnance and heavy equipment training by the U.S. Army, 18-year-old Roger Thompson arrived for duty in Vietnam in March of 1968. During his service, he witnessed firsthand the terrors of war, which inspired his lifetime mission of helping fellow veterans who struggle with both the physical and mental effects of combat.

In the South Beltline and Gills Creek area of Columbia, many homes were extensively damaged by 2015’s historic “thousand-year flood.” Rachel Larratt, a survivor turned volunteer from that area, reflects on the water rising in her own home, as well as the deflated spirits of other survivors who continued to struggle to recover after the disaster.

In the neighborhoods surrounding Lake Katherine, one of the most heavily flooded areas in Columbia during October 2015’s historic “thousand-year flood,” locals, like Marwan Marzagao, went from house to house on Jon boats and pontoons to rescue neighbors trapped in their flooded homes.