Louis B. Lynn’s family tree is rooted in entrepreneurship. His grandfather owned a grocery store and his father ran a butcher shop. “My father was businessman of the year back in the ’60s. Last year, we won the Ronald H. Brown Leadership Award,” says the president and chief horticulturalist of ENVIRO AgScience Inc. (No. 84 on the be industrial/service companies list with $28 million in revenues).
The 29-year-old family-owned business provides construction, construction management, architectural, and landscape services. In addition to its Columbia, South Carolina headquarters, ENVIRO has offices in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
Lynn launched ENVIRO in 1984 using his severance pay for 15 years of service after being downsized from a middle management position at Monsanto, one of the nation’s largest agricultural companies. As someone who follows the “each one, teach one” principle, Lynn could have become a college professor; he holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in horticulture from Clemson University and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. But it was the entrepreneurial bug and a green thumb that led him to create a commercial lawn care business that he has cultivated into a full-service construction management company servicing private sector, government, education, and military clients.
Now it is the next generation, Lynn’s children, who are spearheading plans to make ENVIRO a multinational company. His daughters Adrienne Lynn, 39, an engineer, and Krystal Conner, 36, a pharmacist, serve as vice presidents. His son, Bryan, 28, is a landscape manager. Furthermore, a succession plan is in place for Lynn to pass the reins on to his daughters and thereby transition ENVIRO into a certified minority- and woman-owned enterprise. Lynn will stay on as chairman, while Krystal will serve as CEO and Adrienne as president.
“My father didn’t pass on a business but the desire to start a business,” the 64-year-old Lynn says. “We are the first generation in my family to have a real opportunity to pass on a substantial business.”
article by Carolyn M. Brown via blackenterprise.com
Posts tagged as “South Carolina”
In 2002, a novel thought to be the first written by an African-American woman became a best seller, praised for its dramatic depiction of Southern life in the mid-1850s through the observant eyes of a refined and literate house servant. But one part of the story remained a tantalizing secret: the author’s identity.
That literary mystery may have been solved by a professor of English in South Carolina, who said this week that after years of research, he has discovered the novelist’s name: Hannah Bond, a slave on a North Carolina plantation owned by John Hill Wheeler, is the actual writer of “The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” the book signed by Hannah Crafts.
Beyond simply identifying the author, the professor’s research offers insight into one of the central mysteries of the novel, believed to be semi-autobiographical: how a house slave with limited access to education and books was heavily influenced by the great literature of her time, like “Bleak House” and “Jane Eyre,” and how she managed to pull off a daring escape from servitude, disguised as a man.
The professor, Gregg Hecimovich, the chairman of the English department at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., has uncovered previously unknown details about Bond’s life that have shed light on how the novel was possibly written. The heavy influences of Dickens, for instance, particularly from “Bleak House,” can be explained by Bond’s onetime servitude on a plantation that routinely kept boarders from a nearby girls’ school; the curriculum there required the girls to recite passages of “Bleak House” from memory. Bond, secretly forming her own novel, could have listened while they studied, or spirited away a copy to read.
The research also shows that Bond may have been given a man’s suit by a member of the Wheeler family who was sympathetic to her desire to flee.
Professor Hecimovich, 44, said that he has verified the writer’s identity through wills, diaries, handwritten almanacs and public records. He intends to publish his full findings in a book, tentatively titled “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts.”
His work has been reviewed by several scholars who vouch for its authenticity, including Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s pre-eminent scholars of African-American history. Professor Gates bought the obscure manuscript at auction in 2001.
Darius Rucker has hit the top of the charts both the leader of Hootie and the Blowfish and as a solo country artist. And now, a street in his hometown bears his name. The pavement leading to the North Charleston Coliseum in South Carolina where Hootie and the Blowfish played in the 1990s shortly after it opened was renamed Darius Rucker Boulevard on Monday, reports the Associated Press.
Rucker grew up in the Charleston area and was on hand for the ceremony along with North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey. Rucker says he may return to the coliseum this fall to play a country set. But first he plays with Hootie and the Blowfish next week at the Family Circle Stadium on Daniel Island.
article via eurweb.com
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The third time’s the charm for Candice Glover on “American Idol.” The 23-year-old vocalist from St. Helena Island, S.C., won the Fox TV singing competition after auditioning a trio of times and making it to the finals this year. Glover looked stunned when “Idol” host Ryan Seacrest announced she bested soulful 22-year-old country singer Kree Harrison from Woodville, Texas.
Glover said backstage after winning she learned to “Have fun, live in the moment and be confident.” “Because in previous years I wasn’t, so that’s definitely the key if you want to audition for the show or have a career,” she said. After her crowning, an emotional Glover sobbed her way through her new single “I Am Beautiful.”
Grammy- and Oscar-winning former “Idol” finalist Jennifer Hudson returned for Thursday’s finale for a show-stopping duet with Glover on Natalie Cole’s “Inseparable” (see above).
Glover’s win marks the first time a female and a nonwhite singer has won the competition since Jordin Sparks dominated the sixth season in 2007. The previous five winners — Phillip Phillips, Scotty McCreery, Lee DeWyze, Kris Allen and David Cook — were all Caucasian guitar players, known to “Idol” fans as WGWGs, or white guys with guitars.
The lack of a female champion for the past five years was mocked in a finale bit featuring the female finalists, in cahoots with Sparks, jokingly sabotaging this season’s five male contestants. “The good news is ‘Idol’ leftovers have been doing really well on ‘The Voice,'” Sparks teased.
Besides the coronation of Glover, Thursday’s finale also served as a farewell for Randy Jackson, the show’s last remaining original judge who announced last week that he’s leaving “Idol” to focus on his record label and other business opportunities. Jackson served as a judge on all 12 seasons of “Idol.” He first appeared on the panel alongside Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul when the competition debuted in 2002, becoming famous for his easygoing “yo, dawg” rapport with contestants.
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Venus Williams outlasted fellow American Ververa Lapchenko in three sets Friday to start a long day of tennis for the Williams’ family at the rain-delayed Family Circle Cup.
Venus was up a set and held a 3-0 lead in the second set before Lapchenko won six of the next seven games to force a third set. Lapchenko led 1-0 before Williams found her game and closed out the set, 6-2. Williams will face 18-year-old Madison Keys later Friday for a spot in the semifinals Saturday.
Top-ranked Serena Williams also must play twice Friday after a 7 1-2 hour rain delay wiped out much of Thursday’s schedule. Serena will play Mallory Burdette. If she wins, she’ll play either sixth-seeded Lucie Safarova or Sorana Cirstea.
via Venus Williams wins at Family Circle | theGrio.
Joanna Jenkins, a 108-year-old woman from Beaufort, South Carolina, is about to vote for the first time in her life. After passing up her right for decades, she was finally compelled to cast her ballot after following this year’s presidential election and debates. Not only does she suddenly want to vote, but Jenkins’ cousin Shirley Lee says she’s excited about doing so and sharing the good news with everyone who visits.
A homeless South Carolina man (pictured) is $200,000 richer after spending $10 on a lottery ticket in Greenville, Fox affiliate KEYC-TV reports. The South Carolina Education Lottery confirmed the win. The winner declined to be identified. He bought the winning ticket at a Simon’s Liquors last week and jumped for joy after realizing that he had the winning numbers.
The man plans on purchasing a home with his winnings. “To see a person, you know he gets $200,000 he doesn’t have a penny in his pocket but $20,” said Simon Sfeir, owner of Simons Liquors, who sold the winning ticket, according to the Associated Press. Sfeir gets $2,000 of the winnings for selling the ticket.
article by Terrell Jermaine Starr via newsone.com
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Ninety-five years ago today, jazz trumpet innovator and bebop pioneer John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. Gillespie, who famously lead his own orchestra as well as recorded with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, is best known for his compositions “Salt Peanuts,” “Woody N’ You” and “A Night In Tunisia,” as well as popularizing Afro-Cuban jazz in the United States. Learn more about his life and music by clicking here and watch his “Manteca” above.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson
ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. — The Penn Center, a historic African American cultural institution that once educated freed slaves on the South Carolina coast and later served as a retreat center for civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, is celebrating its 150th anniversary.
The Penn Center on Saint Helena Island started in 1862 as one of the nation’s first schools for emancipated blacks and, at the turn of the 20th Century, became an agricultural and industrial school.