My Legacy

It is always difficult to look at a legacy, while one is still alive. Usually, that sort of thing is done by others at a later date, but I wanted to examine my legacy. Some people consider their legacy as their children. After all, the children are carrying on the name or work of their parents. Since I don't have any children, and probably never will, I can't say that children will be my legacy. In examining my legacy, I was thinking about all of the work I have done on stage, screen and TV. I may have given someone a laugh or a tear. I may have given someone a memory of something I did or said. Is that enough of a legacy? I suppose so, because when someone thinks of me, there will be that memory. Hopefully good. My legacy could also be in he work I have done for the church. Primarily with the beginnings of the Singles Ministry at First Baptist Columbia. Or, my legacy could be with being the first person to major in Communications at Southwestern Seminary, and that they had to create the major for me. Others have majored in it since me. I have been a trailblazer in many areas. But, I would like to think of my legacy in two buildings. The first came when I worked for the US Department of Commerce. My supervisor had worked for the post office, and there was some interest in opening a new post office for the expanding population of Northeast Columbia. My supervisor gave me the task of determining if there were enough people in that area to support a new post office. I did surveys and polls. I looked at maps and trends. After a lot of research, I determined that the Northeast did need a post office, and zip code 29223 was born. If I had come back with a different recommendation, who knows what would have happened to that area. The second building was Columbiana Centre. A mall was being planned for the Harbison area, which was another growing section of Columbia. It was 1988. I was on a buying trip for Belk with John Brusack (my retail mentor) and Bill Belk (VP of Belk Stores) in Chicago. Mr. Belk was there to meet with the developers of this new mall in Columbia. It didn't have a name as of yet. Just before Mr. Belk was to have his meeting, he showed me a couple of aerial photographs of the area under consideration. Each spot was on either side of Harbison Boulevard. The developers wanted the spot on the left side of the road. It was big and sprawling. The right side was smaller and more compact. I told Mr. Belk to go after the right side. He told me that it was smaller, and they wanted a big impact on the left side. I told Mr. Belk that the natural movement of people, coming off of a highway or going into a store, is to go to the right. The right side would be more successful than the left side. If you go into a store, look at the right first. You'll see more expensive stuff on the right than the left. It is a natural fact. So, my suggestions to Mr. Belk made sense to him, and he went to the developers and said they wanted to go with the right side of the road. That is why Columbiana Centre was built where it was. My suggestion. The left side went to Wal-Mart, and it just didn't do as well as other Wal-Marts. So, those are my legacies. A post office and a mall. Pretty good, huh?