NEWS: Statue of Hollings to be unveiled in spring

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher  |  A life-sized statue of retired U.S. Sen. Ernest F. Hollings is expected to be unveiled in the spring thanks to efforts by a group of close supporters and friends.

The bronze statue will be placed in the garden outside a federal courthouse annex once named for Hollings.  It was renamed last year, after a unique request by Hollings , as the J. Waties Waring Judicial Center.  It is located next to the federal courthouse on Meeting Street in Charleston at the Four Corners of Law.

“Senator Hollings is selfless,” said prominent Charleston attorney Thomas Tisdale, who chairs the group that is raising $150,000 to pay for the statue.  “His contributions to this state are huge over a very long period of time.  He got us through the civil rights era better than almost any other Southern state by having a balanced and good view of social justice.

“He served in the Senate for 38 years.  He deserves to be honored by the citizens of this state,” Tisdale added.  “Putting up a statue of him is a good way to begin honoring him — a statue that will endure for the history of the community.”

When the courthouse annex first was dedicated in 1988, it bore Hollings’ name.  But Hollings , who got the federal funding to build the annex, never really wanted the building named for him.  That was  something that was done for him at the time by U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond.

A couple of years ago, Hollings contacted U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, both of South Carolina, and told them he thought it was more fitting for the building be named for Waring, a civil rights-era federal judge who wrote a key dissent in a school segregation case that became the foundation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954  Brown v. Board of Education school integration decision.  Back then, however, Waring was ostracized for the dissent and left Charleston after retirement.

Fast forward about 60 years:  Graham and Clyburn pushed through the measure to rename the building.  At its rededication in 2015, Clyburn said Hollings was the first person ever to ask that his name be taken off a federal building and for it to be renamed for someone else.  During the ceremony, Clyburn said, “Fritz, you have shown us so many ways how to be a real person, and this has to be right at the top.”

Tisdale said Virginia sculptor Rick Weaver, who crafted a statue in the annex grounds of Waring that was unveiled in 2014, is working on the statue of Hollings.  More than $115,000 has been raised for the effort from people all over the country.

• To make a tax-deductible contribution for the statue, send a check to the South Carolina Bar Foundation, P.O. Box 11875, Columbia, SC 29211.  Be sure to write “Hollings Statue Fund” on the check.

Organizers of the effort include Tisdale and co-chairs Charlton deSaussure Jr. and Lawrence O. Thompson.  Members of the statue committee are lawyers, businessmen and supporters, mostly from the Charleston area:  Ashley Cooper, Brian Duffy, Joe Griffith Jr., Trip King, Hugh Lane Jr., Mary Jo Manning, Michael Manning, Paul Tecklenburg and Ed Westbrook.

Honorary chairs are former U.S. Secretary of Education and Gov. Richard W. Riley, former Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. and Clyburn.  Advisors to the committee include three federal judges based in Charleston:  P. Michael Duffy, Richard Gergel and David Norton, Tisdale said.

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