Put the John de la Howe kids in orchestra seats for Carmen at the Koger Center

By Temple Ligon
December 27, 2013 

 John de la Howe was a French Huguenot who located in Charleston soon before the Revolutionary War. A prominent physician, de la Howe moved in 1785 from Charleston to his 2,000 upstate acres between Long Crane Creek and the Little River, which he named Lethe Plantation. Today the property is the home of the John de la Howe School, founded in 1797 with de la Howe’s money and since 1918 a state agency. The property is a few miles north of McCormick, S. C.
 
The school teaches children between the ages of 12 and 17, most of whom suffered impossible situations at home, including violence. To protect the children from their dangerous home environments, they were sent to John de la Howe School, where they typically spend two years while their home situations are corrected to the point of suitability for the children’s return.
 
The State newspaper ran a letter on its editorial page a few months ago that illustrated some of the positive past at John de la Howe. Carlos Gibbons Sr., a retired state employee who wrote the letter, knew all about John de la Howe School and its student population peak of 400. Currently the school operates with a few students short of 100.
 
Still, observed Gibbons, the school maintains high standards among a high number of programs. A current list includes classroom education and practical training in food service, landscaping, clerical skills, horticulture, agriculture, equine handling, forestry preservation, and greenhouse management.  
 
Thanks to its large tract the school encourages its students to take up fishing the local streams and rivers, hiking nature trails and riding horses across the school’s land.
 
There are two tennis courts on campus, but the state’s capital of tennis is about a half-hour away in Belton, where the students can commute for regular lessons. Any kid can learn to play tennis well in two years at John de la Howe, all that’s needed is the encouragement, court maintenance and instruction funding.
 
The school also has a wilderness program which teaches intensive group interdependency, a k a teamwork. While just about completely immersed in nature while staying away from the school’s impressive physical plant on its main campus, the students learn all about nature and all about each other.
 
Nearby in Edgefield, the federal prison allows select students at John de la Howe to participate in Project Wakeup, an opportunity to learn from the inmates the harsh reality of prison life. The inmates sit one-on-one with children who run the risk of entering the criminal justice system.
 
For the past four years, John de la Howe School has operated under a fluctuating budget between four and five million dollars. Its campus of 12 residential cottages, chapel, infirmary, school classroom campus, family center, administration building and other historic buildings can easily absorb a second hundred students without much expansion in the physical plant.
 
And the demand for a second hundred is very much there.
 
A growing population of day students is showing its demand among the area schools near McCormick that have no alternative schools for their students who were misplaced in a conventional environment.
 
Another growing population is a national phenomenon of misplaced students in conventional schools who would fit well in the John de la Howe School if only there was room and if only there was transportation and funding available.
 
Monthly tuition at John de la Howe School runs between $50 and $350, depending on parents’ income. Out-state-students could be charged the higher tuition since their home states would pay the tuition as a government responsibility for a state with nothing to handle the tough cases. In other words, by opening up the school to out-of-state students, there’s something of a margin in their tuition payments, helping to defray the costs of the in-state students, a little like what happens at the University of South Carolina where the university takes kids from all over and charges the out-of-state students twice the tuition paid by an in-state student.
 
South Carolina should be taking John de la Howe School further to a widely recognized national leadership position in alternative school education.
 
On a smaller scale, the question is always asked, What can we do?
 
One idea gaining ground at John de la Howe School is the profoundly positive approach of taking the students to cultural events, things going on in South Carolina that rarely draw teenagers except the offspring of highly cultured parents.
 
The art museums in Greenville and Columbia, for instance, both offer extraordinarily well-informed docents who can talk art at the teenagers’ own level.
 
The symphony orchestras in both cities have student ticket prices and group considerations with lectures by the conductors before performances.
 
All of South Carolina is famous for its legitimate theater.
 
The Palmetto Opera in Columbia is staging Carmen this March 1 in the Koger Center. The performance is by Teatro Lirico D’Europa, the same troupe who gave us Madama Butterfly, La Traviata and Tosca over the past three years. With a full orchestra, something close to 50 pieces, and English supertitles, this Carmen should make quite an impression on the students at John de la Howe, assuming the students can score tickets and the school can swing the transportation.
 
Last year for Tosca at the Koger Center we managed to get 10 John de la Howe students and their adult supervisors down from McCormick in a bus which first came to my place on Terrace Way. We put together a cheeseburger factory at my back-deck grill overlooking Blossom Street. The kids had a ball. Then we all took the bus to the Koger Center for grand opera. Talk about a grand time!
 
This year, this March 1, we want to take even more to experience grand opera at the Koger Center, this time Carmen. This will be a different crowd, but I hope a much larger crowd, so we’ll put on the cheeseburger factory, conscripting kids to learn about kitchen management and food service etiquette.
 
What can we do?
 
You can come to my place this Monday night, December 30, 5:30-8:00, and have a drink to observe New Year’s Adam – Adam before Eve. We’ll serve just about anything at our open bar, but Bellinis will probably be the dominant libation since that’s how it works at the Palmetto Opera intermissions. And it’s not just the Bellinis; it’s who serves them.
 
Regular tickets to Carmen are $46, and student tickets are $36, so I ask every couple to contribute $36 to sponsor a John de la Howe student to sit for Carmen at the Koger Center on March 1. If you’re coming to my place by yourself, well, that’s a fair half-price admission. Just give $18, and that covers half the cost of one student’s opera ticket. The school will provide the transportation, and I’ll handle the early supper for all the students and their supervisors. For the supervisors’ tickets, $46 for each, I’ll have to round up the funds. Anybody wanna help?
 
So I hope to see you on New Year’s Adam, Monday night, 5:30-8:00, at 2225 Terrace Way, and please bring a check for $36 made out to John de la Howe School Foundation.
 
Can’t make it Monday? That’s OK. You can still send a check. Thanks.

Reach Temple at – [email protected]