A week of bad news in Chester, but the community marches on
The shots rang out in the parking lot of the water department, and two people died in broad daylight in the middle of downtown Chester after a domestic squabble.
City administrator Sandi Worthy ran to the scene to try to comfort her employees.
That is Chester.
In a week of such bad news that it almost defies description, still the hugs were given out to ease the fears of trembling souls who had been working with Angie Small one minute, and saw her dead in the parking lot the next – lying next to her estranged husband who had shot her, and then himself.
That care is Chester.
As the cops did their grim work, Worthy and so many others did not yield to fear and did what Chester people do – they care for their neighbors.
Just two days earlier, Chester City Councilman Odell Williams, a retired police officer, was gunned down in what police say was a gang-related, drive-by shooting. The mayor and other City Council members rushed to the hospital as the cops did their jobs in the midnight hour.
That love is Chester.
As a fire raged out of control at a landfill, people went to work in glass factories and stone-making plants and the hospital and doctors’ offices – except for the hundreds of volunteers who lost pay at their regular jobs to fight the fire.
Hard men worked long shifts in heat that “would melt steel” to protect nameless strangers from potentially toxic smoke.
That volunteerism is Chester.
Garbage was picked up all week. Mail was delivered. The cooks at Gene’s Restaurant arrived before sunrise each morning to make the coffee and eggs that would feed the men and women who work on their feet all day at plants. Clerks and laborers at the water and sewer department, public works diggers, retail clerks and warehouse stevedores – they all worked, all week.
Some incomplete ballots were delivered for Tuesday’s elections, and poll workers offered to drive “to the middle of I-77” to get the right ballots so people could vote. More than 7,700 people in Chester County voted Tuesday.
That devotion is Chester.
Chester County is home to about 33,000 people. Some 5,500 of them live in Chester. Two decades ago, the county boasted at least eight textile mills that employed most of the population. People worked, raised kids, cheered at high school football games.
Then, the mills closed. Unemployment soared. Chester people had to drive to Rock Hill or Charlotte or Columbia to find work. The county is among the poorest in South Carolina, and America – poverty that is jaw-dropping to see.
In many places, the houses and apartments are dilapidated. That is a fact. There are hundreds of drug cases in the courts that have yet to be prosecuted. There are murder cases waiting for trials – almost all over turf or drugs or money. The police chief and the sheriff, both black men, acknowledge a crisis among young black men involved in gangs and drugs and what always comes after – jail and prison.
Chester police have fought a growing gang problem that has claimed too many lives in just the past four years. One gang member was shot and killed by another outside the hospital emergency room where the work of saving lives was desecrated by those who take lives.
Chester people fight on.
Earlier this year, Chester fought for, and won, a new tire plant that will employ thousands of people when it is finished in a few years. Good jobs, fair wages. benefits.
That is Chester.
“Ninety-nine percent of the people in Chester do what they have to do to put food on the table, raise families,” said longtime Chester County Councilman Archie Lucas. “No denying this week has been nothing but bad news, but you can’t let the actions of a few show the world what Chester is.
“Chester is a lot more than killings, and a few people who think the right to bear arms means they can carry a gun tucked in their belts and go shootin’ people or taking out the troubles on their wife.”
Cops dealt with the shooting of a former cop and Chester City Councilman and a murder-suicide in which an enraged husband took out his problems with bullets – first on his wife and then on himself – and still those officers made time to handle domestic violence calls and go to court because other victims had been hurt. In Chester County courtrooms, clerks and staffers pushed on, despite death by gunshots a hundred yards away.
They are Chester.
Sheriff’s Capt. James Darby and Maj. Randy Marsh took time out from the high-profile murder investigation to be at the historic courthouse because little old ladies and elderly men had been swindled by a career criminal. Franklin Roof stole tens of thousands of dollars in scams, and was finally caught. The officers sat in the courtroom so the victims could see them. They had investigated a crime that made no news, and they brought the bad guy down.
Then the two cops, up more than 24 hours straight, went back to working to catch the killer of Odell Williams.
“We have work to do,” each said as they left the courthouse – where real justice is meted out – to go back out in the streets, where a few weaklings and cowards try to impose justice by waving guns and using them.
The people of Chester remain undaunted. The vast majority who work and laugh and love, they do not quit.
Amid killings and fires and gangs and drugs, thousands of kids go to school. Hundreds of teachers teach them. The future is dreamed about.
That is Chester.
This story was originally published November 8, 2014 at 6:07 PM with the headline " A week of bad news in Chester, but the community marches on."