It was all Jairy C. Hunter Jr. had. He embraced it, challenged it, questioned it, looked through the dark clouds above and, because of it, saw blue skies in the offing.

It was hope.

Now, 25 years after accepting the enormous responsibility of reviving a college “on the brink,” whenever the Charleston Southern University president is asked about those dark days in 1984 he is reminded of the power of hope — that, and the faces.

“You come in here everyday and see the purpose of the institution, and the faces of all these good people; it grabs you,” said Hunter.

Hunter found the faces impossible to ignore. They were everywhere on campus: classrooms and offices, events and gatherings. Day and night, at home, work, Sunday worship services, fundraising along back roads of small towns across the state. Each face an inspiration, more fuel for hope.

In the spring of 1984 everyone connected with the college was looking for a reason to believe, a glimmer of hope. With good reason, there wasn’t much of anything else.

One month before Hunter was named president, in April 1984, the News and Courier reported the Baptist College (now Charleston Southern University) was $4.5 million in debt ($2.7 million for the chapel construction and $1.8 million in various loans). With no cash flow, no money in reserve, the college slipped deeper into debt, falling “two payments behind on all the original buildings” and within the first six months of Hunter’s presidency, the school slumped into financial exigency.

“Scary,” Hunter said. “There were some severe financial situations.” He made his point, repeating the phrase again, the second time more deliberately with intense emphasis on each word, “Severe … financial … situations. There was no cash anywhere.”

Stubborn hope

Hope begins in the dark; the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up. – Anne Lamott

Doubt is effortless, easy.

Hope is exceedingly more challenging. Hope requires patience. Hope is clinging to belief even while others bail out on a difficult situation. Hope demands selflessness. Hope can be a lonely place. Hope is the road less traveled; the road Hunter chose when he accepted the position.

He worked and hoped, hoped and worked, then tirelessly worked some more with a hopeful spirit. Besides, he had his diamond in the rough, his saving grace; a brand new chapel was being erected right in the middle of the campus.

“I looked out my window one day and thought to myself, ‘Now this is a blessing, to have that beautiful building,” said Hunter. “It’s going to be a signature building.”

The feeling of being blessed passed – quickly. Not long after assuming his role, President Hunter arrived on campus early one morning and was approached by two men asking to “see the main man,” said Hunter.

“What do you want to see the main man for?” he asked the unfamiliar faces.

Both men, contractors hired to work on the chapel replied, “We need our money.”

President Hunter assured the workers, “If I see the main man, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”

Hunter walked directly into the business office on the lower level of Jones Hall. The office was desolate, except for the files that sat stacked on the desks.

“At that time there wasn’t a business officer,” said Hunter. “Both he and his wife resigned.” He dove into the records. Bills, bills, bills and one nondescript card box was left behind.

“It had donors’ names that, over a period of several years had made pledges to help build the chapel which totaled up to $1.6 million in pledges, but cash, not much had come in,” remembers Hunter.

Minutes later, Hunter was in his car, on the road.

“I started calling every single one of those people,” he said. “I stayed on the road everyday for about 10 days. We had to do whatever we had to do to keep the lights on.”

Two weeks and one-half million dollars later Hunter returned to Charleston, still more than one million dollars short on what was originally pledged.

“We knew it was bad, but we didn’t know how bad,” said Dr. Ken Bonnette. “It wasn’t until after Jairy arrived and started opening some closet doors that things just started falling out. They just kept coming, they kept coming and coming … everyday we’d deal with a new crisis.”

Tired, yes. Beaten, no. Hope was still alive.

‘ This is the one’

Hunter’s tenacity and business acumen were what provoked Dr. Bob Cuttino to pick up the phone. Cuttino was a childhood neighbor back in Lancaster, South Carolina, and a trustee at the Baptist College in the spring of 1984. He had kept tabs on Hunter’s career for nearly 30 years.

“Actually, I thought he was calling to ask me for some recommendations,” said Hunter. “I told him I really didn’t know anyone who would be qualified to be a president of a church-related school.”

“No, I’m talking about you,” said Cuttino.

Hunter backpedaled. “Frankly, I wasn’t that attracted because I felt I had a very good job,” Hunter remembered. He was vice chancellor of development and business at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Cuttino asked Hunter to send a resume, and the committee would review it. Hunter agreed. The field quickly narrowed from 45 applicants to five finalists, including Hunter. Despite the absence of presidential experience in higher education, on paper Hunter was an impeccable candidate. At UNC Wilmington, he served six years as the vice president for business affairs and development.

“We desperately needed a couple things,” said Bonnette, who was one of two faculty members on the presidential search committee in 1984. “We needed somebody who had business savvy and could right the ship because of financial problems. That was very critical. Second, we needed someone who could raise money.”

The search committee was chaired by William H. Seals and was comprised of Dr. Bonnette and faculty colleague Carol Drowota, trustees Robert E. Cuttino, W.F. Whitfield, Charlene Kirk, Mildred Bomar and James P. Craine; a 1972 BCC graduate – Larry Cannon. One-by-one, the committee checked off on Hunter’s credentials.

Business savvy.

Check.

Fundraising.

Check.

“We were looking for someone who was young and energetic because we knew that the burdens were going to be really heavy,” added Bonnette. “It had to be someone who had an energy level who could sustain these two offices [business and fundraising].”

Check. Check.

“We wanted someone who was an active Baptist,” he continued. “He met the criteria. He had a Ph.D. from Duke University. He had respect immediately from faculty and staff.”

Check. Check.

When Hunter arrived at the Baptist College with his wife, Sissy, in May 1984 he quickly realized the grass was greener in Wilmington. As a matter of fact, the BCC grass wasn’t green at all. Truth was you couldn’t see the grass on campus. It was overgrown in weeds and hadn’t been cut in weeks, maybe months.

“The campus was quite disturbing,” said Hunter. He would use the words “sadness” and “forlorn” to describe the eyesore he saw on his first visit. Piles of uncollected trash, rundown mobile units behind the library building, paint-starved dorms and buildings, mildewed walls, ragged carpeting, parking lots full of potholes and an overbudget, unfinished chapel.

“It was not an attractive situation,” said Hunter.

The first four finalists had already interviewed. Hunter was the final candidate. Everyone on the search committee was “leaning toward another candidate.” For Bonnette at least, the interview seemed like a formality – until Hunter spoke.

Bonnette said he remembers Hunter’s words as if it was yesterday.

“Every institution talks about academic excellence, nobody says they don’t favor academic excellence,” said Bonnette, quoting Hunter. “The thing about a Christian university is why they favor academic excellence. They do it to honor God, and, if you’re going to do something to honor God, it has to meet the highest standards.”

Hunter told the committee, “If you’re turning out accountants, you want to turn out people with the highest ethical and moral values.” He then turned to Bonnette and spoke directly. “If you’re turning out chemists, people studying premed, if you’re honoring God you’re turning out the very best. Our obligation as a Christian institution is to meet higher standards than the other institutions. Not just equal to, but higher, because it is to honor God.”

Bonnette turned and looked at colleague Carol Drowota. He whispered, “That’s it! That’s what it’s all about right there. That was the clincher.”

The board asked Hunter to leave the room for a few minutes. “We decided then — this is the one,” said Bonnette.

Meanwhile, Hunter wasn’t so sure. What he saw and heard countered all human instinct. His business instincts told Hunter no. His ego said no. His pride said no.

As the Hunters drove out of Charleston on I-95, Sissy turned and asked, “Did I have any ‘feelings’ about the interview,” remembers Hunter.

“Yes, it was kind of frightening,” he told her.

After a couple hours of silence driving on I-95, Hunter said he realized he “had not answered that question properly. She was referring to, did I have any ‘feelings’ like wanting to help the school,” he said. “Then I began to comment that, ‘yeah, I had some feelings today.’”

“Well, if they are interested in asking us to come there, we probably ought to help them,” added Mrs. Hunter. “They are looking for somebody that has an academic background, a business background, fundraising background, teaching experience, a South Carolina native and a Baptist. It just seems like you’re the one they’re looking for.”

“Oh, I didn’t see it that way,” said Hunter.

Jairy and Sissy decided, if the Baptist College made an offer, they would accept the challenge. A simple promise, a huge responsibility and a personal sacrifice: long days, weekends, thousands of miles traveling from one small South Carolina town to another to recruit students, raise funds, build relationships one handshake at a time and calm fears one promise at a time.

There were no guarantees. It would take honesty, trust, hope and, more than anything, faith. Hunter’s personal commitment was to serving God first, then convincing alumni, friends and business leaders to have faith in him – and Him – that the University was worth the investment.

“I guess what was going on was providential,” Hunter said. “I honestly didn’t realize it, but the Lord was preparing us and moving us toward this assignment. I was primarily looking at it as a professional assignment. As it turned out, it was more than that.”

On May 17, 1984, by a unanimous vote of the Search Committee, the Baptist College named Jairy C. Hunter Jr. president. He left the powder blue skies of North Carolina and headed south for a deeper shade of blue, a hint of gold and the hope of a silver lining.

Pruning

Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away. And every one that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bring forth more fruit. – John 15:2

The trustees were called to campus on an early December morning in 1984. Hunter delivered the news to the 24 of 25 in attendance: financial exigency would be declared.

“It was the worst day of our lives,” said Bonnette. “Disaster. Worst it could be. The decision was made that we had to terminate 40 people. We had to call them in and tell them that December 31st was going to be their last day.”

In the end, the reductions of personnel and academics programs represented more than a one million dollar cut in operating budgets. The decision allowed the Baptist College to stay in business.

“Now, that was bad, but it wasn’t the worst in my mind,” said Bonnette.

The meeting closed. The mood was somber. No one was in a celebratory mood. That same afternoon, as letters were being prepared to inform 40 employees of their termination, the same campus leaders who made that fateful decision walked across campus to attend the dedication of the new chapel.

“The chapel symbolized the new growth, the new institution,” said Bonnette. “The chapel was what we stood for. That morning we declared financial exigency and 40 people had to be let go and that afternoon we had to go through, this is a shining moment, it is our turning point to move forward. That was hard. It shaped us. We operated under the idea that we’re not going to let this happen to this institution again.”

The weeklong celebration was highlighted with former Governor Robert McNair speaking at the dedication ceremonies. Two days later, NASA Astronaut Dick Scobee and his wife, Dr. June Scobee, a Baptist College graduate, presented items taken on the flight of The Challenger earlier in the year.

Hundreds of people from across the state came to rejoice with the college on the dawning of “a new era” of reassurance and reaffirmation. The $3.8 million building was 54,000 square feet and the music building another 17,000.

The celebration offered little solace to Hunter and his colleagues. In an interview with the local media, he stated the cold, hard facts.

“We have a financial crisis,” said Hunter in a December 14 published report in the News and Courier. “I’m not going to sit here and let it happen. We are going to work to bring the deficit down and avoid bankruptcy. The news is that we’re dealing with it and making progress.”

In Secrets of the Vine, Bruce Wilkinson writes: “Sometimes we can go through things and wonder what is going on, we’re living obedient faithful lives, trusting in God, knowing Him, reading the Word, yet things are hard and times testing. Take heart. You are being pruned to create more and more fruit. Pruning involves cutting and breaking of branches. That can hurt. But growth comes.”

And, growth was coming.

The Burger King Meetings

Early last fall, Baptist College at Charleston was in such poor shape that its new president said only a series of miracles could save it. – News and Courier, August 4, 1985

Sometimes at night or on weekends Hunter and Bonnette mutually agreed to meet halfway between their homes to discuss strategy. That point was the fast food restaurant, Burger King.

“Dr. Hunter would grab a napkin, and he’d sketch out what the plans we’re going to be on the napkin,” said Dr. Bonnette. “If you were to check my files over the years you would find lots of napkins in there, simply because that’s how we did it.”

Bonnette claims it was during the course of one of those early Burger King meetings that he first saw a glimpse of hope. “The plan for survival, stability and excellence, that was a napkin,” he said. “When I saw on the napkins, I knew. We came back to campus with those napkins and that was the plan. Then we started filling in the details.”

Survival. Stability. Excellence. That was the plan. After the announcement to declare financial exigency but before the meeting adjourned, Hunter revealed the plan to the board of trustees. It was a three-stage vision to move the college forward. Little did the trustees know, it was born on a napkin.

On another napkin, at a later Burger King meeting, Hunter and Bonnette laid out the foundation for excellence early. They decided, on a napkin, “it was going to be education and business,” said Bonnette. “We decided that – napkin. He’d [Hunter] sketch something out, then he’d pull another napkin and he’d add to that and we’re trying to keep them all straight so we can get them all back to the campus – because this was our plan.”

The plan worked. By May 1985, the end of the fiscal year for the school, the Baptist College was operating with a balanced budget. Public trust was restored. Financial support was growing. Enrollment was increasing. Morale was improving after the college received a “strong vote of confidence” from the South Carolina Baptist Convention, retaining the college’s accreditation.

“We got the miracles we needed,” Hunter told the Post and Courier in 1985. “Miracles do happen, if people are truly doing what they ought to be doing, if they’re doing what God wants them to do, then they are open for miracles. I think Baptist College found out what it needed to be doing and now it’s doing it. And miracles are happening.”

Enrollment increased again in 1985. Debt was paid off. Expenses were down. Hunter and the Baptist College were beginning to see daylight. “By the end of the second year we actually got in the black and for 21 consecutive years we operated that way.”

Despite all the stress and politics, the strife and debt, Hunter said he never considered walking away. “I made a commitment,” he said. “I told the board I would stay three years. I knew things were difficult, but I didn’t realize they were as difficult as they became. But I really believed that at the end of the three years I’d go back to the system [North Carolina].”

The Hunters agreed to stay three more years.

“Three years was up like that,” said Hunter, snapping his fingers. “After three years, everyone is looking around, and they’ve got some hope. Things were moving forward. Enrollment was good.”

Bearing Fruit

On a mild, sunny September morning Charleston Southern University president Jairy C. Hunter stood on the stage, of all places, Lightsey Chapel Auditorium, to accept the Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian honor in the state of South Carolina, for his 25 years of service.

Hunter and the chapel have been together since Day One. Almost 9,000 days now separate the CSU president from the News and Courier report that described the Baptist College as a school “fighting for its life, crushed beneath the weight of runaway debt and declining enrollment.”

Hunter was on the chapel stage, a place he described 25 years earlier as “… a blessing, a beautiful, signature building.” A facility he fought desperately to keep, the site of his inauguration in 1986 when former trustee and presidential search committee chair William H. Seals said, “As Dickens said of the French Revolution, they were leaderless, the people were in despair, the people were without direction, – and so it was here at Baptist College to some degree. Jairy Hunter came here and accepted the challenge. It was the worst of times, but Jairy Hunter made it the best of times. He took the challenge as we gave it, and today we have made tremendous progress from those dark days of 1984.

“We were somewhat in despair but he gave us hope. Through hope this College has now grown back into pre-eminence and it is my vision that somewhere, someday, Jairy Hunter will go down in history as having been an integral part of the growth of Baptist College. Of making it what it ought to be and what it should be and what it can be,” said Seals.

Yes, hope.

Check.

(as published in CSU Magazine)

Remus Harper received his first noxious lesson of what it meant to be an African-American college athlete in the South on an autumn afternoon along a nondescript stretch of Interstate 26 on the outskirts of Orangeburg, South Carolina.

It was 1968.

The country was four years removed from the Civil Rights Act that legally snuffed out Jim Crow laws, three years north of the Voting Rights Act and two years after Don Haskins’ Texas Western all-black starting lineup upset Kentucky to win the men’s NCAA basketball championship. But, by the Spring of 1968 progress soured following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and, locally, the racially-charged “massacre” in Orangeburg.

Race relations were a raw nerve.

As the College of Charleston basketball team caravan plunged through the state on an early season road trip, Harper sat in the rear of the team station wagon fashioning his new white wristbands and headband. In a random act of housecleaning Harper picked up a cardboard sign lying on the floor of the wagon, pressed it to the glass, wedged it into the window frame and returned to marveling at his wristbands.

Now imagine the poor kid, the class nerd, in grade school who walked the halls with a sign stuck to his back that read, “Kick Me!” After a series of kicks and healthy heap of humiliation the kid caught on and tore the paper off the back of his shirt.

From the outside of the station wagon looking in, the sign was a one-word caption: It read HELP … and there sat Harper beside it; preoccupied with his wristbands, oblivious to the message he was sending. One can only presume the thoughts and images that spooked observers zipping by on the interstate.

“Remus will you ask your brothers if they’re going to go with us or behind us,” said College of Charleston head coach Fred Daniels, tongue-in-cheek, as two African American men pulled alongside the vehicle carrying Harper.

Harper glanced over at the car beside him. He made eye contact with the two black, never cracking a smile. He then lifted his arms, crossed his forearms at his wrists, forming an “X” across his chest. It was a symbol of the times, it meant, black power. In this case it was a sign, a code for help. If the HELP sign didn’t make it clear, when Harper crossed his arms, it was surely clear.

The anonymous men sped off.

It’s not what it looked like — really. A car full of white men and one African American in the bed of the wagon, beside a moving billboard seemingly caged up and pleading for HELP, in 1968, in Orangeburg, on the heels of the infamous Orangeburg Massacre that claimed the lives of three blacks and injured 27 others earlier that same year.

What it looked like was pending horror.

Minutes later Daniels was stunned to see blue lights in his rear view mirror. His mind instinctively went down the checklist: registration, license, inspection, tires, tail lights, head lights, everything was in working order. He looked at his speedometer. He wasn’t speeding.

Daniels pulled over and jumped out of the vehicle, frightened by the prospects of what might happen next.

He knew what happened on that infamous February night in Orangeburg. Who didn’t? This was the South, not Oakville, Connecticut, the small factory town where Daniels grew up near two black families, the only two black families in Oakville. Daniels knew both of them. Race relations were less tense than they were in the South at the time. People were people, regardless of skin color. Daniels would go on to help integrate Duke University, both academically and athletically. He abhorred prejudice.

“What’s the problem?” Daniels asked.

“We just got word from a couple of black guys that you’re kidnapping this guy in the back,” said the officer, pointing to Harper.

“No, we’re the College of Charleston basketball team,” said Daniels.

“There are no black people at the College of Charleston,” barked the officer. “Don’t give me that. You better give me another story.”

“No, really, we’re actually the College of Charleston basketball team,” begged Daniels.

“I don’t know what you are, and I don’t know where you’re going, and I don’t know what you’re going to do with this n—— here in the back, but I’m asking you not to do it in Orangeburg County,” charged the officer.

“That was the mentality,” said Harper, 40 years later.

Welcome to Remus Harper’s christening as the first African-American student-athlete at the College of Charleston. The Orangeburg incident was the most egregious, but certainly not Harper’s first run-in with prejudice. He was born into racism.

Wrong place, wrong time

Timing is everything.

Born in the Lowcountry, Remus Harper was reared in the fifties. Jim Crow laws were still in practice. As a boy he remembers using a separate door and a separate waiting room when visiting the doctor, signs directed him to drink from a separate water fountain, the once-popular Woolworth’s lunch counter always served whites first and sitting on the train tracks outside the North 52 Drive Inn, watching movies because theatres were “white only.”

Harper’s exposure to racism were both subtle and blatant, ignorant and inventive, clever and crude, mental and physical, spoken and written, young and old, male and female, shouted and spat out between dribbles on the court, whispered under every corner street lamp and waved off at every lunch counter in the South.

“There was a place not far from my house, a diner, they sold the best hamburgers, but we couldn’t go in,” remembers Harper. “We had to go to the back door and order.”

Remus would spend his days playing basketball in his off-white Converse Chuck Taylor high tops on the asphalt courts at the local playground and dreaming of being the next Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson or, his personal favorite, Hal Greer. Even then the veil would open and racism would expose its ugly head.

“We played football or basketball with the white guys,” said Harper. “The ironic part of it was, when they got with their peers, we were ostracized. It really raised the level of hostility because you knew as a person you were being looked upon as being less than.”

(Dis) integration with intent

The College of what?

The College of Charleston.

Where?

In South Carolina.

“Never heard of it,” said Harper.

Harper graduated from Bonds-Wilson High School in North Charleston valedictorian of his class, geographically less than 10 miles from the College of Charleston. If Harper didn’t make the statement with such a serious tone, it would be easy to mistake the quip as sarcasm.

The College of Charleston, then a private university, had a modest enrollment of 432 full-time students or, more precisely, 432 white students, zero black students. The numbers were no coincidence. Through 1967, the College of Charleston, a private university until 1971, made an effort to exclusively recruit white students.

David Goin, a pint-sized, bespectacled, inexperienced college graduate was the lone admissions counselor at the College of Charleston. His recruiting tools consisted of two single sheets of paper, one titled “All white High Schools in Charleston County,” the second, “All white High Schools in South Carolina.”

Fred Daniels interviewed for the Director of Admissions position in the summer of 1968. With then president Walter Coppedge out of town, Daniels was treated to the ten-cent tour of the campus. “There’s nothing to see,” said Daniels, remembering the visit. “There was one building. I had no idea. You walked out of the back door you could get hit by a car.”

Daniels and Goin then killed time, talking about recruiting. That’s when Daniels first saw the recruiting lists. He shook his head and thought, this is not a mailing list it’s an instruction. Before his plane left Charleston that afternoon, Daniels was convinced. He couldn’t think of any circumstance in which he’d even consider returning to Charleston. Daniels returned home and told his wife, “There’s no way in the world (I’d take the job). We just got Duke integrated.”

“Duke had no black students. Duke had no black players. So I became the guy,” said Daniels. “My job was to go out and get kids, better kids and black kids. Finding kids who were admissible was not hard, finding kids who would come into that environment was difficult.”

A few days passed and the phone rang. It was College of Charleston president Walter Coppedge.

“How was your visit?” he asked Daniels.

Daniels assured Coppedge his visit went smoothly, but said, “I just can’t do it. I really appreciate it, but I just can’t do it, it’s not in me.”

“Would you tell me why?” Coppedge asked.

Daniels told Coppedge he was offended by the recruiting methods.

Coppedge told Daniels as president he had his word, the doors would be open to African Americans, and he’d be able to recruit – students, not athletes — without parsing race. He had the president’s “full support.”

Daniels eventually accepted the offer and, that summer, he moved his wife and children into a modest house on Ashley Avenue, not far the College of Charleston campus.

‘ I was not impressed’

“He was the perfect person to do this – perfect … There’s nobody I ever met at the college that ever met Remus and one, didn’t like him, and two, thought he was black.” – Fred Daniels

It may have been the first time an African American ever stepped into President Water Coppedge’s house – unless they were hired to clean it. In the summer of 1968 Coppedge hosted a recruitment event at his home, guidance counselors from Charleston County arrived and Daniels picked their brains, looking for quality students.

That’s where Daniels first remembers hearing the name Remus Harper. A guidance counselor told Daniels she had an exception student – and athlete. Harper was a team captain in both baseball and basketball and class valedictorian. He was a clearly a leader, a young man who could handle adversity, even thrive in it. He was exactly what Daniels was looking for – black students, not basketball players.

Before the Fall of 1968 Coppedge was gone and Ted Stern was named the 16th president of the College of Charleston. Known for his disdain for injustice along racial lines while with the Navy, Stern was confronted about integration during his interview. When asked what he would do if an African American applied to the college, without missing a beat Stern said he would review the application the same as any other.

“Mr. Stern was a masterful administrator,” said Daniels.

It was a tipping point for the College of Charleston – and Daniels. Stern approached Daniels about coaching the College of Charleston basketball team. The inquiry caught Daniels off guard. He wasn’t a basketball coach, he was the admissions director. Sure he had dabbled in it, coaching and teaching for two years at Sewanee Military Academy a few years back, but that hardly made him an experienced basketball coach.

But, Daniels had plans of his own: one year at the College of Charleston and he’d be gone. It was a buffer to another position-in-waiting at newly formed Virginia Commonwealth University, where he would settle down with his wife and family. Maybe this coaching thing wasn’t such a bad idea after all. It could be fun, at least for one year.

Daniels would lead all recruiting efforts during the spring and summer and during basketball season, in the fall and winter he would send his assistant David Goin on recruiting road trips while he manned the office during the day and coached the basketball team.

“What they didn’t know was, I was going to go get me a Negro,” added Daniels. “They knew I had already enrolled a couple of black kids (students).”

Once it became official, Daniels called Bonds-Wilson High School looking for Remus Harper. Now a basketball coach, Daniels wanted to me Harper. Remember, team captain, valedictorian, leader.

“He was the perfect person to do this – perfect,” said Daniels. “He’s bright, clever, entertaining and funny. He was courageous, a solid student – never threatened. He got in and got out, no problem. There’s nobody I ever met at the college that ever met Remus and one, didn’t like him, and two, thought he was black.”

Harper was treated to the grand tour of the College of Charleston. Daniels boasted about the school’s history and academic standards which followed with “a tour of the main campus where the cistern is and the old gym on George Street,” remembers Harper.

“That’s it!” said Daniels.

“Say what?” asked Harper.

I am not going to the College of Charleston, Harper thought. “I was not impressed,” he would say years later.

“He made it clear that he saw no value in this,” added Daniels. “He wasn’t looking to be the guy who integrates the athletic program at the College of Charleston.”

Fred Daniels believed Harper was the perfect person to integrate the College of Charleston. Remus Harper had his own plan: attend South Carolina State University (with his friends), get his education and bypass all the social discomfort that accompanied blacks into universities across the country in the sixties.

“My guidance counselor said you have very little knowledge of the historical significance of this,” said Harper. “You’re going to go to the College of Charleston. My mom and my guidance counselor said yes for me.”

The Dark, Deep South

“When we went on the road it was tough, tough … these redneck son-of-a-guns the farther we went up I-26 were tough.” – Fred Daniels, former College of Charleston men’s basketball coach

Before the team stepped outside of Charleston, before the first person could utter a distasteful word, before the first fan would purse their lips and spat on Harper and his teammates, before white restaurant owners could close the doors in the face of the College of Charleston, Fred Daniels spoke.

The message was simple: It’s going to happen. Daniels knew it. Harper knew it. The otherwise all-white team must come to grips with what they were about to face: racism. These wouldn’t be the distant, harmless video bites detached from reality they’d see on television or the sound bites veiled in racism they’d hear on the radio, no, this was reality. It was going to be in-you-face, angry “redneck son-of-a-guns” from the Deep South, hootin’, hollerin’, stompin’ and spittin’ at them. It was going to be ugly. But Daniels told his players to focus on the game.

“You can dislike these people all you want, but you can’t under any circumstances, you can not make us look like bullies or worse rednecks than they are,” Daniels said.

“These were the sixties, tumultuous times among racial lines,” added Harper. “One class of people looked down on another class of people. We stepped into what we called ‘their class.’ We had to feel the brunt of what they dish out. You expected it, but there were people who were around you that didn’t tolerate it, and they expressed their discontent.”

Daniels met the road without hesitation. Wherever the team traveled, whenever a whiff of injustice simmered, Daniels exploited the opportunity to rub the injustice in the faces of those “redneck son-of-a-guns.”

Harper remembers the team caravan pulling off at diners and Daniels telling the team, “Let me go in and see if they’re open.” If the owner saw Remus, the restaurant mysteriously closed. And for those who granted the team access, well, they paid the price for all those “redneck son-of-a-guns” that came before them. Daniels always sent Harper to the register to pay the bill. The look on the person’s face at the cash register was often priceless, and Harper was milking it for everything it was worth.

“I’d be at the counter looking around at the guys, flipping twenty’s down,” he said.

‘It was the biggest coaching mistake I ever made’

This was not the way Fred Daniels wanted to start his coaching career at the College of Charleston, but he had no one to blame but himself. In one of his first acts as head coach Daniels, with permission and approval from the Stern and the college athletic director, he invited Elizabeth City State University to participate in the season-opening weekend tournament.

Daniels had no idea just how good the ECSU Vikings were, until they hit the floor.

“We got our asses kicked by these guys,” he said.

With the College of Charleston trailing by 12 point at the end of the first half, the team gathered in the locker room. With his team gasping for breathe, Daniels offered little hope.

“We’re going to have to start playing some man-to-man, these guys are pretty quick,” he said.

“That’s a good idea coach, these n—— are scared of us,” said Harper, the only African-American on the College of Charleston roster.

“I’m not too sure about that Remus,” responded the coach.

Daniels was right. As the final seconds ticked off the clock, Elizabeth City turned a 12-point lead into a 60-point blowout. “By the last play of the game they’re still trapping us at half court,” remembered Daniels. “That was my first college coaching experience. It was one event that changed everything more than Remus did. It was also the biggest mistake I ever made coaching.”

Daniels learned hard and fast lesson about Elizabeth City. The team would finish their season a semi-finalist in the NAIA tournament. Three of Elizabeth City’s starters would later get drafted by the American Basketball Association (ABA).

The 1968 season opener against a powerful opponent, featuring an entire roster of African-American student-athletes, ushered integration into Charleston. It didn’t come quietly. They arrived screaming and left tournament champs.

“Here’s a black team playing the College of Charleston, in Charleston,” said Daniels. “It was on TV. It was in the newspaper – black guys running up and down the court at the College of Charleston — and there are pictures. It wasn’t like we snuck a Negro in.”

Stumbling blocks to stepping stones

“It was a rich experience, but not without trial.” – Remus Harper

“Why are you recruiting blacks to this school?” one professor asked Daniels. “You know they can’t pass the courses. They will never pass my course.”

It angered Daniels. The memory still does. “I’ve never met any white people that are ‘picked on,’ or that are prejudiced against, but I’ve known some black people that are,” he said.

Remus Harper’s girlfriend Tanya, now his wife, landed in that professors class not long after. She knew the history. It would be an uphill battle to just finish the class, let alone pass the course. By the end of the semester she had “aced” the class said Harper. But it didn’t end at that.

“After the final she wrote him a note and commended him for his teaching ability and that she thoroughly enjoyed taking his class,” said Harper. The professor contacted Daniels soon after and confessed he made “… the statement he made was the biggest mistake he’d made in his life.”

“You’re going to find people who aren’t going to change no matter what,” said Harper. “Then you’ll find there are people who will change if they know who you are.

“It wasn’t an easy time,” said Harper. “It taught me how to deal with the real world. You grow up fast. To walk into a gym and be shouted at and called names because I had a darker skin color. We bleed the same color. It was mind boggling at times, but we turned these stumbling blocks into stepping stones.”

It was a lesson Harper could never learn in the classrooms on George Street in downtown Charleston. Prejudice and racism were not on the College of Charleston course list. There is no formal education to prepare a person for that.

Not because it’s 96 degrees in the shade. Or because he wonders whether he’ll make next year’s cut. Or because the air conditioner is busted at his new home in Hanahan. Nope.

Kiser is sweating because, for the last month, he’s been out of work. He was “laid off” on May 17 when the Stingrays were eliminated from the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) Conference Finals. The temporary pink slip is an annual event for every player in the ECHL.

“Sitting around in your house doing nothing for about a week is cool, but after about a week and those bills start rolling in and everyone is out working and you’re doing nothing…” he says. In the meantime, Kiser keeps one eye on the classifieds.

While most of the National Hockey League world is probably jetting off to some tropical location to sip little umbrella drinks and lounge around a pool soaking up the sun, their understudies in the ECHL are scrambling to find second jobs to fill in their summer schedules and supplement their modest hockey incomes.

As a newlywed and new homeowner, Kiser is ready for a steady paycheck. “I have a house now, a mortgage, the whole nine,” the hockey player and Michigan transplant says. “My wife works and we save up money during the season, but you don’t want to just live off that for the summer.

“Last summer was the hardest for me because the economy in Michigan is terrible,” says Kiser. “I was looking for work for a while, and, unfortunately, there wasn’t much floating around. I was finally able to land a construction job.”

Since signing his first professional contract in 2003 with the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey league (AHL), Kiser has moved and moved and moved again.

“We have packed and moved our stuff over 10 times throughout my pro career,” he says. “It’s not like I’m a single guy, and I can just throw everything in my car and go. We have to pack up a U-Haul, take it home, then unpack everything, every single year.”

Kiser and his wife grew tired of the 700-mile off-season odyssey to and from Charleston and Michigan, and, despite the rocky economy and the instability of a career as a professional athlete at the minor league level, the couple purchased a home in Hanahan.

In hockey circles, the ECHL is referred to as a “developmental league.” It is two notches below the NHL. In between is the AHL, the next step up for an ECHL player.

According to the ECHL official website, in 2007-2008 a team’s salary cap per week was $11,200. According to Jared Bednar, head coach and vice president of hockey operations for the Stingrays, the team paid $11,000 per week in player salaries (or $550 per player on average).

To put that in perspective, the NHL league minimum salary for a player last season was $475,000. (By 2011-2012 it will be $525,000.) Based on those numbers, the entire roster of the Stingrays — one of the most respected organizations in the league — earned less than any one NHL player last year.

“I have kids ask me all of the time, ‘How much money do you make?’” says Stingray defenseman Scott Romfo. “I always tell them, ‘Enough to pay the bills.’

“We don’t make millions. If you’re a single guy with no expenses, you’ll do fine. I went to a four-year college. I didn’t have a full scholarship. I have to pay student loans.”

Summertime Blues

For professional athletes, everything is temporary when you’re chasing the dream in the minor league system. Nothing is nailed down, including contracts. Some ECHL contracts are non-guaranteed, meaning the team can waive a contract with one week’s severance pay, making it an even more daunting way to earn a living.

Kiser, a native of Southgate, Mich., (population 30,316, according to 2000 Census figures), grew up with small-town values and a blue-collar work ethic. His off-the-ice work experience includes past stints as a commercial carpenter, construction worker, general laborer, and one summer at the local Michigan police impound lot.

“I was the guy out there when people would come to get their car out of impound, I would have to take them out to their vehicle. Or, if they claimed they needed to get something out of their vehicle, make sure they were taking what they were supposed to,” Kiser says. “Some people wouldn’t think the vehicle was worth getting out of impound, so they would try to take their stereo and subwoofers and leave the car.”

According to Kiser, working a summer job has an uncanny way of putting things in perspective. “At the end of the week, after working your 40 hours a week, you’re doing whatever everybody else does that’s not what a professional athlete does, that’s work extremely hard to support your family and pay the bills,” Kiser says. “I definitely get a greater appreciation for hockey and being able to do what I do.”

Meanwhile, teammate Scott Romfo is living with his brother Brian in Hanahan.

Romfo parlayed his academic and athletic abilities into a successful four-year collegiate career as a student-athlete at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (R.P.I.), the legendary Division I ice hockey program in Troy, N.Y.

In the spring of 2006, after graduating with a degree in biomedical engineering, Romfo was sitting on a job offer from General Electric. He turned it down.

Romfo says, “I would have been making three times as much as I make now.”

A stable salary, vacation time, a health insurance plan, and a 401(k) plan — all of it sounded great to Romfo, but there was another passion in his heart, one with no tangible benefits, no substantial salary, and no guarantees.

Like so many others, Romfo decided to chase his dream of one day playing in the NHL. “I thought about it and decided I had to try this,” says Romfo. “I was only two steps away from the NHL. If I didn’t, when I’m 40, I’d be asking myself, ‘What might have happened?’”

“I think he made the right decision,” says former teammate Cail MacLean, who retired from professional hockey last month at the age of 31 years old. “If he wants to get a job he’ll be able to, but he won’t always be able to be a professional athlete.”

Just days before the hockey season came to an end, Romfo accepted an engineering position with Global Aeronautica, which is located at the Charleston International Airport, just a couple of miles from the North Charleston Coliseum. The company, owned in part by Boeing, assembles and integrates the fuselage for the Dreamliner 787.

“It’s not the same line of work I got my degree in, but it will look nice on my resume,” Romfo modestly confesses.

Before accepting the offer at Global Aeronautica, Romfo was employed as an independent sales representative for Carolina Health Connection. He was recruited by former Stingray Jeff McLain. “I liked the sales aspect of the work,” he says. “It’s competitive. It reminds me of hockey.”

Romfo’s local celebrity status didn’t hurt either. “I don’t make a point of using that, but some people recognize me by my name, and it helps, because they feel more comfortable,” he adds.

Saying Goodbye to the Dream

Cail MacLean, a native of Middleton, Nova Scotia, wasn’t dreaming about million-dollar contracts, big houses, and sports cars — he was dreaming of wearing a National Hockey League uniform, skating for thousands of rabid hockey fans in a sold-out arena, while turning each imaginary shot in the family basement into the game-winning goal of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

His career spanned 11 seasons and included 15 different teams, the last three seasons playing for the Stingrays. He reached the American Hockey League, but never the NHL. “It was something I dreamed about since I was 12 years old, lifting weights and shooting pucks in my parents’ basement,” says MacLean, the former Stingrays captain.

His formal retirement was a decision in the making over the last four years. “Finances were a large part of the decision, but money wasn’t a prerequisite, or I wouldn’t have played as long as I have,” says MacLean, who’s attending Trident Technical College full-time this summer as a business administration major.

For most of the last 11 summers, MacLean spent the off-season on the ice training young hockey players. “I was able to kill two birds with one stone,” he says. “I could make extra money in the summer and get my conditioning and fitness training in for the season at the same time.”

In 2004, MacLean, then only 28 years old, was shuffling between the Hershey Bears (AHL) and Reading Royals (ECHL). He knew time was against him and that the NHL was probably no longer “in the cards.”

“I wasn’t getting any younger, and the ECHL is a developmental league with a lot of younger players,” he says. “It was a decision life was making for me.

“After working so hard to play in the AHL, once I realized I was losing my grip and I wasn’t going to be moving up … we decided we were going to get a little more from hockey for our lives. I wanted to decide life for myself and not let hockey dictate my choices.”

His decision to sign a contract with the Stingrays in 2005 was not happenstance. It was all part of a larger plan in the transition from hockey to the real world — not on hockey’s terms but on his own.

MacLean says, “Lifestyle was high on our list. I looked for places where we wanted to live and combined that with finding an organization that had a good reputation. We moved here sight unseen. The only things I knew about Charleston were what I was told,” he says. “My wife Keri and I both love the beach. She surfs, and I’m trying to learn to surf.”

The former Stingrays captain says, “I decided that I was going to stop taking call-ups and live in Charleston and enjoy it.”

When the Ice Melts

Scott Romfo is 27 years old, single, and has no family to support. For now he is going to enjoy the game as long as he still has the desire to play. Today Romfo is working on a new dream: winning the Kelly Cup, the ECHL equivalent of the Stanley Cup, a goal the Stingrays almost reached last season. It’s a dream that Nate Kiser also shares.

Romfo’s motivation is his brother Jeff, a former Stingray (1996-2000) who was a member of the 1997 Kelly Cup championship team. “There’s a lot of trash talking between us,” says Romfo. “It would be nice to shut him up.”

He also hasn’t given up on playing in the NHL, but he is aware that his chances are slim, “Most of the guys picked up by NHL teams are either out of junior hockey or Division I college hockey,” Romfo says.

“I still have hope, but I’m not getting any younger.”

The description reads like instructions for some alternative aerobic workout: Adjust right wristband. Tap plate with bat. Touch bill of helmet, end of bat, touch helmet again. Balance bat on shoulder. Tighten batting gloves. Dig spikes into dirt. Then, right hand crosses over left, tug left-hand glove. Twist cleats and rotate bat counterclockwise in tight circles. Repeat four times from start to finish between each pitch.

And that’s only half of it.

When Garciaparra takes the field on defense, he climbs the dugout steps in small, repeated hops until he completes his ascent. Then, he spins around the third-base coaching box, bounding to the foul line, finishing with a leap over the chalk toward his assigned position. Like clockwork, Garciaparra repeats this routine every inning throughout the game.

If B.F. Skinner could see this, he would have scrapped his research and dedicated his life’s work to the Garciaparra Project.

Garciaparra, a five-time all-star, has been called superstitious, and rightfully so. But is he obsessive-compulsive? According to MUSC sports psychologist Geoffrey Cheek, probably not, at least if Garciaparra’s ritualistic behavior is limited to the ball field.

“A baseball player who goes through a ritual when he hits, does he also go through that same ritual when he’s playing softball with his family?” Cheek asks. “If it were a true compulsion, I’d expect he would.”

The Golden Thong

To the average sports fan, this kind of on-the-field behavior is bizarre and fascinating, especially the extreme cases. Consider Charleston RiverDogs pitching instructor Jeff Ware and his unique game-day dining habits.

“I had to get to an Olive Garden on the day that I pitched,” says Ware, a former player in the Toronto Blue Jays system. “I always ordered the chicken Parmesan. It was especially tough on the road. If there wasn’t an Olive Garden within walking distance, I was taking a cab.”

As for those times when Ware could not find an Olive Garden, well, he was SOL. “Then you just hope everything goes right when you pitch, but when it doesn’t, you can blame it on the fact that you couldn’t find an Olive Garden,” Ware says and laughs.

Then there’s the story of New York Yankee Jason Giambi and his gold lamé, tiger-stripe thong. In a story first reported by Portfolio.com last May, Giambi confessed he wears the thong when he’s in a hitting slump. “I only put it on when I’m desperate to get out of a big slump,” Giambi said. It was later reported that Giambi, who first bought the thong in 1996 when he was with the Oakland Athletics, has shared it with current teammates Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, and Robinson Cano.

“All of them wore it and got hits,” he said. “The thong works every time.”

Jeter agreed that Giambi’s thong works. “I was 0-for-32, and I hit a homer on the first pitch,” he said. “That’s the only time I’ve ever worn it.”

So does Giambi’s golden thong have some sort of magical powers? Of course not. But for the ballplayer who slips on that pair of tiger-striped panties, something otherworldly seems to happen. See, Giambi’s golden butt floss is a fetish, an object believed to possess “supernatural” powers that can aid or protect the owner. Not surprisingly, this kind of good luck charm is a standard piece of equipment for some ballplayers. Some choose a pair of socks. Others an unwashed jock strap. And a few — OK, make that one player —a necklace made from animal bones (see sidebar).

According to George Gmelch, cultural anthropologist and author of the article “Baseball Magic,” superstitious behaviors among ballplayers fall into two major categories — rituals and taboos. Garciaparra’s famed batting gyrations, that’s a ritual. When he jumps over the base line to take his position in the infield, that is a taboo.

In “Baseball Magic,” Gmelch writes, “Breaking a taboo, players believe, leads to undesirable consequences or bad luck.” He adds, “Taboos usually grow out of … poor performances, which players, in search of a reason, attribute to a particular behavior.”

The article uses the studies of Pacific Island fishermen by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski as its basis. Malinowski found that the fishermen had rituals they performed to provide magic when they went out in dangerous, shark-infested waters, but none when they ventured into safe, calm lagoons. Gmelch applies this finding to baseball, pointing out that most superstitions involve the more stressful parts of the game — hitting and pitching.

Using Gmelch’s psychological theory, we would have to assume former Charleston RiverDogs relief pitcher Jesse Hoover has a foot fetish, or, more correctly, a footwear fetish.

Whenever the reliever begins to slip into a pitching funk, he throws away his cleats and picks up a new pair in the hope that his luck will change.

“Obviously, it’s all mental, but the mind is a powerful thing. If you believe something is going to help you, whatever,” Hoover says. “I have three pair [of cleats] here. I’m on my second pair, so I’ve got to make them last through the year.”

We have a feeling Hoover will be wearing that second set of cleats for some time. He was just moved to the New York Yankees’ minor league team in Tampa Bay.

The Great Failures

The greatest hitter in the history of the game is Ty Cobb. His lifetime average is .366. Statistically, he failed more often than he succeeded.

The greatest home run hitter of all time is Barry Bonds. He hit 762 career home runs. He struck out 1,539 times; that’s more than two strikeouts for each home run hit.

Cobb and Bonds are considered “great” players, but they also failed — and quite often. Failure rules the game of baseball. In general, hitters fail somewhere between 70 to 75 percent of the time.

What does that have to do with superstitions? A lot.

MUSC’s Cheek brings up a point made by the late communications theorist Paul Watzlawick of Stanford University in his book, How Real Is Real? “When your level of success at something is very high, you make very simple theories about what works,” Cheek notes. “But when your level of success at something falls below 40 or 50 percent (which it does in most sports), it creates much more complex cognitive theories about what you have to do to be successful.”

Some sports psychologists suggest superstitious behavior blossoms only after failure takes root in the mind. In The Mental Game of Baseball, psychologists H.A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl explain it this way: “When that [success] happens, we ignore facts or logic, and our thoughts and actions can be strongly influenced by superstition. We believe in the feelings … We believe in the power of belief.”

Skinner talked about the “reinforcement effect.” According to the psychologist, when an individual performs an action expecting a specific result, it creates a sense of persistence in the mind of the individual. This parallels superstitious behavior because the individual feels that by continuing this action reinforcement will happen. At the very least, the individual believes that reinforcement has come at certain times in the past as a result of this action, and that this time may be one of them.

Hoover, the Yankees’ fifth-round pick in 2004, suggests that when a player changes his shoes or kisses his bat, that behavior builds confidence. “There are little things that can help boost your confidence and give you a mental edge,” he says. “I did it (changing shoes) earlier this year, and it helped me out.

He adds, “You don’t want to admit that you give into something that small.”

According to Cheek, this typical behavior is “a type of coping mechanism that works to create a successful behavior. It’s a behavioral routine that gets one into a state to be able to perform with excellence.”

Or as Ron Smith, sports psychologist and former team counselor for the Seattle Mariners, told The Seattle Times, “The problem is, we fear negative consequences a lot more than we value positive ones. What happens to an athlete is that if he wore a particular sock or pair of shirts, or did some ritual, and had success, he’ll continue to do that. That act reduces the anxiety associated with not doing it. It’s the exact same mechanism, clinically, we find in obsessive-compulsive people.”

Stupidstitions

Athletes will often deny being superstitious. They prefer to talk about their routines or rituals. Former major league pitcher John Wetteland even invented his own word to describe the sometimes bizarre behavior of ballplayers: stupidstitions.

“It’s kind of pejorative,” writes Gmelch, who interviewed dozens of professional ballplayers for “Baseball Magic.” “But if you ask them what they do to give themselves confidence, they’ll tell about their rituals and beliefs. All that is superstition. If they realized it really is functional, they wouldn’t be so reluctant to admit it.”

According to the RiverDogs’ Ware, it’s all about establishing a routine. “A lot of times you want to create routines for yourself,” Ware says. “They’re superstitions, but they are also part of your routine, being mentally prepared and trying to do things over and over the right way. We talk to guys here about getting in a routine, getting to the park at a certain time, eating similar foods the night before and the day of your scheduled start when you’re going good. That’s all part of routine, and you want to have a good state of mind.”

So, why do it?

“I don’t know why,” Ware confesses. “It’s something I’ve always done. There’s really no rhyme or reason. What it all comes down to is being prepared, mentally and physically. Making sure you’re doing your running, lifting, conditioning, all that stuff. It’s not about finding an Olive Garden.”

Retired College of Charleston psychology professor Charles Kaiser knows why. A player “doesn’t feel comfortable unless he does it,” he says. “Most athletes can’t explain why they do it. It’s something their brain is making them do. They learned it before. It’s an unconscious behavior. It has nothing to do with baseball.”

Garciaparra was asked point blank what he thought would happen if he stopped his intricate routine. He replied, “Why wouldn’t I do it?”

MUSC sports psychologist Geoffrey Cheek has worked with a lot of golfers, including many at the Citadel. According to Cheek, experience can also play a role determining whether or not an athlete becomes a slave to superstition.

While caddying for a group of golfers that included two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer, Cheek says, “The amateur that I was caddying for had about a three-foot putt. He just kind of said, ‘Oh, this is nothing.’ And Bernhard Langer said, ‘I could tell you about some.’”

He adds, “You tend to see the older, more experienced players talk about putting as being much more difficult.”

Why? Older golfers have missed a lot more putts than younger golfers, and as a result, they more consciously feel the pressure each time they try to sink the ball.

According to Cheek, athletes who believe that fetishes or rituals should be credited for successful performances instead of, say, their own skills, potentially face creating deeper problems for themselves. “That is essentially the illogic of the procedure,” Cheek explains. “It gives up control.”

He adds, “The efficacy is put in the ritual as opposed to the person, and that detracts from that person’s real learning about what they need to do. There’s this thing that gets built up as if it will make something happen when there’s a much different set of processes that have to do with the performance.”

Former RiverDogs pitcher Jesse Hoover admits that relying on routines can both help and hurt an athlete’s performance. “Sometimes a guy is making good pitches, and he’s just not getting results,” Hoover says. “Then you want to start changing something mechanically when it’s not necessary, and it makes it worse.”

Working out the Kinks

Superstition is not an elixir for a batting slump. Superstition has never won a batting title, pitched a no-hitter, or crushed a walk-off home run. Superstition has never been on the Hall of Fame ballot, nor does it own a World Series ring. Although some athletes may feel differently, superstition is not part of the mathematical equation measuring success. Superstition is incalculable.

Still, if channeled properly, superstition can help an athlete succeed — both on and off the baseball diamond. In The Mental Game of Baseball, Dorfman and Kuehl write that consistent and repeated thoughts and behaviors are the elements of effective mental preparation. They lead to confidence. In the ballplayer’s mind, if a routine relaxes or improves their concentration, which leads to an extra hit a week, or 25 extra hits a season, that’s the difference between a .275 and .300 batting average. And in the case of Giambi, the awkwardness of wearing a thong has kept him from thinking about his troubles at bat. It takes his mind off hitting.

Oddly enough, superstitious behavior may be the mental edge some athletes need to cope with high-pressure situations, to overcome an intense fear of failure, or to instill confidence. “The obsessive-compulsive personality would be the type of individual who would more likely be adopting these behaviors,” says retired psychology professor Charles Kaiser. “They’re perfectionists. That’s, in a way, why they’re successful.”

(as published in the Charleston City Paper)

As he weaved in and out of the debris and surveyed the wreckage, memories of Hurricane Hugo came flooding back. The sights and sounds gave way to an emotional ambush.

“It was heartbreaking. They lost everything,” remembers Peper. “I still have very vivid memories of what our community went through after Hugo, and we didn’t have anything close to what these poor people went through.”

Hugo, a Category 5 hurricane, ripped through Charleston in September 1989 killing at least 70 people across the country and racking up an estimated $13.6 billion in damages. It was the most devastating hurricane ever recorded, until Andrew hit the U.S. in 1992.

Peper, a Charleston Southern alumnus, has seen a lot in his career, but nothing as devastating as this. Covering Katrina was Peper’s first assignment at WCBD (Channel 2) since returning to television, 14 months after he was dismissed by WCSC (Live 5 News) in August 2004. The veteran reporter had a renewed ambition. He left Charleston for the Gulf Coast with an adrenaline rush and returned numb by what he saw.

“I happened upon a minister at a church that wasn’t there any more, all that was left was the cinder block steps and nothing else,” recalled Peper. “I pulled the minister aside and said, for someone who’s in the business as you are, where do you find God in all of this?

“He said, where you’re going to find God in this, is how we react after the fact, that’s how God’s going to make Himself known.”

Seeing Katrina’s crushing natural disaster on television is nothing like seeing the hurricane’s demolition first hand. The images are branded in Peper’s memory. When prompted, Peper, dressed in a jet black suit, centers his pink and cream stripped silk tie over his crisp, starched white shirt, takes a deep breath and begins sharing the experience, in a seemingly cathartic way.

“I ran into a Catholic priest and asked him the same question later that day,” Peper said. “He told me a story about a small fishing village where a minister had gotten in front of the congregation to talk about a small town where every single child had lost every pair of shoes they had.

“At the end of the service, every teen and every child in that church walked forward and left their shoes at the alter and walked back to their seats. He said, if you can’t find God presence and His hand in that, then you’ll never be able to see it.”

Katrina is fresh in Peper’s memory, but it scarcely scratches the surface of a 33-year body of work as a journalist, an evolution that took formation on street corners in rural Tennessee and Georgia.

Shortly after Billy Graham took the national stage, kicking off a 16-week nightly mission at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1957, John Peper, a Baptist minister, with three sons (Warren, Bob and Steve Peper) in tow, began sharing God’s word on a grass roots level, crusading on street corners across the south.

“He’d roll in with a trailer on the back of his car, had amplification to it, it was kind of a rolling pulpit and the Peper boys would fan out and start handing out tracks, letting people know that there would be a service down at the corner,” Peper said. “He’d crank up his accordion (laughing) … this was a very weird set of circumstances, but my dad felt very lead to do that.”

Today, Peper views the experience as the foundation for what he would do later in life. “It gave me experience of speaking in front of people,” he said. “I learned at a very early age not to be too afraid to stand up in front of people and speak. That, in a very weird and roundabout way, led to my abilities as a communicator. That was a real part of an important developmental period of my life.

“[It] shaped me. Whether I’m in a church setting or in front of thousands of people at a stadium, I’ve never had any qualms with standing up in front of people and talking. If I’ve been given nothing else, it’s the ability to communicate on certain levels.”

Peper’s formal training for a career in television news began when the North Charleston high school graduate accepted a basketball scholarship at the Baptist College (now Charleston Southern University). With the university in its infancy, growing pains became the norm and turnover was constant. Peper had three different basketball coaches in four years.

“What it forced me to do was, realize I was there for more than just to play basketball,” Peper recalls. “When things began to get rocky athletically, I began to get more involved … I became a far more well-rounded student.”

Peper served in student government, participated in the theatre and later was elected junior and senior class president. His world began to open up and soon basketball took a back seat. “I realized this athletic scholarship was more of a means to an end,” he said. “I realized much later that this experience was a very valuable teaching tool to me, it was shaping me for what I was to become. It taught me to adjust.”

In an ironic twist, during his senior year of college, Peper served as a staff intern at Channel 2, his current home. Call it right place, right time, fate, whatever, but the internship paid immediate dividends.

In May 1974, in less than one 24-hour period, Peper accepted his diploma (a BA in speech and drama degree with a minor in English) in a ceremony at the Gilliard Auditorium, celebrated, went to bed, woke up the following morning and clocked in at WCSC as a full-time reporter, where he would spend the next 30 years.

In the media industry it is called “paying your dues.” Everyone does it – everyone. Bob Woodward’s first assignments at the Washington Post were writing restaurant reviews. Walter Cronkite started his career as a wire service copywriter. For Peper it translated into reporting on small town odds and ends, even if the subject you’re interviewing is a horse. Yes, a horse.

“The story that I got the most recognition for early on was a feature I did on horse diapers,” recounts Peper with a sheepish grin. “The carriage horses in downtown Charleston were mandated to wear some type of covering because some were getting upset about the droppings on the street. So I went down on The Battery and effectively talked to a couple of the different horses about how they felt about this decision.”

But his days of interviewing horses were short-lived. Peper, an athlete at heart, gravitated toward the sports department, where he eventually landed the sports director position in 1977, a title he held for the next 27 years, covering the World Series, The Masters and just about every major sporting event in between.

In his formative years, the Peper family moved – a lot. From California to Tennessee to Maryland and South Carolina, they were constantly on the move. In college, Peper experienced similar upheaval, playing through athletic change. Peper always seemed to embrace and exploit each challenge to his advantage. Now, after 30 years in front of the camera at one station, the television veteran faced his greatest personal and professional challenge yet: being let go.

On a summer day in August 2004, he arrived at the station only to learn his fate. A corporate representative from Jefferson Pilot, the parent company of WCSC, greeted Peper, informing him his contract was not going to be renewed. “I was just told … I could come back at a later date to pick up my stuff,” remembers Peper. “It was just done surgically and I was escorted to the parking lot.”

Just like that, Peper was gone.

“It was very tough personally,” Peper said, looking back on the situation. “It was also very tough because it was so public. It happened in a town, where it’s the only place you’d ever worked … and you’re on television. So you’re on TV, now everyone knows you’re not on TV and you don’t really know why.”

Peper was gone, but not forgotten. As the news broke, the public responded in overwhelming fashion. The Post and Courier received the first editorial in the days after Peper’s release. Then, a couple more letters, then more and more. Before long, the editorial page of the daily Post and Courier morphed into a Warren Peper support group.

“What I got out of that was a very real understanding of how people felt about me,” he said. “And I didn’t even know that – or appreciate it. It was terribly humbling.”

In the Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren wrote, the situations that will stretch your faith the most will be those times when life falls apart and God is nowhere to be found.

Peper struggled to find clarity – and his faith was clearly being tested – in the months following his dismissal. “I will admit to this, when I went through this situation, losing my job in a very public way, not knowing it was coming, it took me a little while to understand that I needed to get out of the way in order to let things happen,” recalls Peper. “I was trying to fix it myself, I was trying to figure out how to make ends meat with mortgages and kids in college and all the normal stuff you deal with and it wasn’t until I just got out of the way and let Him take charge. He helped me a lot of years before that, but then when things went South, I tried to fix it. We all think we’re capable, we don’t need anybody else.”

It was in his free time, that Peper had a flashback, his mother Audrey’s favorite Scripture washed over him. “I had a Scripture verse from Proverbs 3:5-6 that my mother used to quote as her favorite,” Peper said. “It just washed over me one day during that period and I thought, ‘Good gosh, just get out of the way bud. This thing will take care of itself.’ Doggone it, the moment I step out of the way, things start coming in and I end up on my feet.”

Even after returning in the Fall of 2005 with WCBD, Peper still struggled to grasp the public’s reaction. He wasn’t quite sure why people reacted so positively about him.

For years, he unknowingly was building a relationship with the audience; he reported, the audience listened. But Peper never saw an audience, he never heard an audience, he just looked at the camera and delivered the news. It became a one-way street, no interaction. This existence left Peper indifferent about the impact he had on the community. Then, during a happenstance meeting, Peper had an awakening.

In December 2005, Peper, his wife Judy and their three children took a family vacation to New York. Peper took his seat next to Pastor Thomas Riley of World Overcomers Ministries in North Charleston.

Not long after the wheels were up, Peper and Riley began to talk. “My wife is sitting across the aisle and she can’t hear a lot of the conversation, but she notices it’s just non-stop,” Peper said. “Ordinarily on a plane, I like to sit back and sleep.”

Riley shared how happy he was to see Peper back on television. “It’s been very humbling,” Peper told him. “I don’t know even know how to respond to the people in this community who have been so kind to me.”

Riley asked if he was familiar with the Biblical adage of “reaping what you sow.” Peper said he was familiar with it, but admitted he looked at that concept in terms of stewardship and tithing.

Riley told him, “all that you gave this community and the way you treated people, the different things you were supplying people with – and didn’t even know it at times – when you needed it, it came back to you, didn’t it? It’s as genuine and heartfelt on their end. You should be proud of that and understand that your 30 years hadn’t been in vain.”

There’s something different about Warren Peper. It’s not something you can put your finger on at first, but it’s recognizable. It’s an intangible quality, one that most of his audience will never grasp. A personality trait, a “safety net” if you will, that separates him from the pack. In the world of Christianity it’s called faith.

“I always feel that I have a safety net that a non-believer doesn’t have,” said Peper. “I don’t mean that casually, saying I take more chances. There’s a certain grace that protects me. I don’t worry about some of the petty stuff.”

You see it everyday in Peper’s smooth performance at WCBD. Between the technical bugs and bad news, there he is, cool as the other side of the pillow, delivering the days news in a time when news is dominated by war, crime and corruption.

Born and raised by parents of strong faith, Peper shared his remarkable testimony, one that started at the age of five when he accepted Christ. “It was in Oceanside, California, I have a very vivid recollection of it,” recalls Peper. “It was a seminal moment for me. I do recognize it was a very early age to have done that … and to understand what was being done.

“I knew exactly what I was doing and I have a very vivid memory of walking down the alter that day. I’m not even sure of the how’s and why’s … it’s funny what you remember. It was a Mother’s Day. I was five years old. It was 1957. I don’t know for sure if I had screwed up at the house that morning or not, but I felt the real need for repentance (laughs). It’s funny how that’s all kept its hooks in me all these years.”

Today, Peper stands on his faith like a rock. His setback, and subsequent struggles, only served as a test of faith, one that rekindled and refocused his commitment to Christ.

“I continue to tell people in a sports analogy that, you are often defined by how you react when you do get dusted off,” Peper continued. “Do you get back in the batters box and keep taking you swings or do you just walk off saying I guess nobody want me? You are far more defined by how you respond when stuff does happen, because that’s life. I don’t know if there are ever any assurances that you’re safe from that stuff, but you are saved. So that’s where I get my inner strength from, my hope.”

The Channel 2 newsroom is alive, full of kinetic energy. The hungry, young 20-something reporters coming and going to the streets for live reports, meanwhile Peper dials up his radar, parsing the days’ events. This is all new and invigorating to a veteran like Peper. For him, it means fresh faces, fresh attitudes and a new role in the newsroom.

“There is a deference given to me, because of my experience and my knowledge of the community,” Peper says while glancing beyond the conference room glass at the staff in action. “I’m very flattered … I sometimes feel like a coach, trying to affect the culture, develop a winning attitude.”

It’s an odd – and sometimes awkward – situation for Peper. He is now surrounded by a team of reporters, most of them half his age who grew up watching him on television. They walk by his desk, sometimes just to catch a glimpse, maybe pick up a nugget of wisdom.

“There’s a lot of respect given to me here that, sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable with, because when it’s all said and done, you put on make-up and you read out loud.”