Commercial Electrician in Jefferson, SC

Now that the city of Augusta has voted to erase all mention of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis from the 5th Street bridge, a local historian is requesting that two of historical markers on that bridge be added to the collections at the Arts & Heritage Center of North Augusta.

Milledge Murray wrote to the Augusta clerk of commission on Nov. 18 asking that the two plaques on the South Carolina side that bear Jefferson Davis’ portrait and information about his service in the Confederate States of America be added to the Center’s archives. Murray serves on the Heritage Committee for the Arts & Heritage Center of North Augusta.

Augusta commissioners were scheduled to address Murray’s request at their administrative meeting Nov. 29 but instead deferred to the advice of Augusta city attorney Wayne Brown, who said the request held “legal implications” and should first be reviewed during a future executive session.

Opponents of commissioners’ Nov. 15 decision to remove Davis’ name from the bridge have vowed to take the city to court, alleging that the commissioners’ action was illegal per Georgia’s Monument Protection Act to remove the historical markers.

The bridge is home to six historical markers commemorating the former Confederate president: the two plaques requested by Murray; two similar ones affixed to the Augusta side; and two mid-span engravings.

The South Carolina chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy donated the two plaques Murray is requesting to the city of Augusta 91 years ago. They now hang at the North Augusta end of the 5th Street Bridge; the two similar plaques were donated by the Georgia chapter and are affixed to the bridge on the Augusta side.

The plaques “represent a significant part of North Augusta’s history as the South Carolina entrance into Georgia at the Fifth Street location,” Murray wrote in his Nov. 18 letter to the Augusta clerk of commission. “In interpreting our history, we often refer to the Henry Shultz Toll bridge that was at the same location. That bridge stood from 1814 to the 1870’s when it was washed away by flooding.”

The flood that destroyed the toll bridge also destroyed the African-American town of Hamburg, which was at the South Carolina terminus of what is now the 5th Street/Jefferson Davis bridge.

Prescott Jefferson has risen to the title of the state’s top high school sprinter and will be staying close to home for his college career.

The Ben Lippen High School senior officially signed to run for the South Carolina Gamecocks Track and Field program Thursday. He picked USC over South Florida and Coastal Carolina.

“They have an amazing program at USF and one at Coastal Carolina. They are getting amazing talent there. But overall, South Carolina is the place I want to call home,” Jefferson said.

With Jefferson’s signing, the Gamecocks’ program has secured the top male and female sprinters from South Carolina. Airport junior Jayla Jamison recently signed with USC’s women’s program. The two-time SC Gatorade track and field athlete of the year is bypassing her senior season of high school and enrolling in September. She eight individual championships to her name.

Jefferson wrapped up his high school career over the weekend by winning the 100, 200, 400 and was a member of the winning 4x400 relay team at the South Carolina Independent School Association Class 3A state meet in Charleston.

The state championship capped off an impressive season for Jefferson, who can boast the title of SC’s fastest high school sprinter. He holds the top times in the state for the 100 (10.54) and 200 (21.23) that came in the Rams Invitational, and his 200 time still ranks in the top 10 nationally.

Jefferson also took first place in the 100 and 200 at the Bob Jenkins Coaches Classic, which pits the top public and private school runners in an invitation-only event.

“I am working six to seven days a week sometimes. I’m constantly going to my coaches and asking them what I need to do to get better,” Jefferson said. “... Been working since June. It (results) was kind of expected but I am grateful and blessed that it has happened.”

Jefferson started training with Charles Proctor, the Keenan boys coach who will take over at Ridge View next year, over the summer. Proctor said Jefferson’s progress has been “slow and steady” and began with transforming his body.

Jefferson, like most athletes during the pandemic, put on some weight and was up to about 161 pounds in June. Since then, he has dropped 13 pounds and his times started to fall beginning with the indoor season and then he has maintained that during his high school season.

Jefferson is focused on lowering his time even more in time for nationals in June and getting ready for his freshman year at USC.

“The progression has been well,” Proctor said. “His goal is to get under 21 (seconds) in the 200 and get in great shape so he can go off to Carolina and compete in the Southeastern Conference.

“South Carolina is getting a hard worker and they will get a great teammate who will do anything to see the success of his teammates.”

Jefferson was one of five athletes from Ben Lippen on Thursday to sign with college programs with others coming from the Falcons’ basketball team — Ross Hartzog (Pfeiffer) Clayton Hunt and Beltran Huertas (Columbia International) and Porter Stanley (Presbyterian).

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WPDE) — Each month, ABC15 presents someone in the community with the Jefferson Award, an award that's been given for 50 years to leaders who inspire action.

This recipient was first introduced to the community last February after she lost her home and everything inside to an electrical fire. Then less than a week after that, she was on her way to Texas to help storm survivors.

While she may have had to persevere through many battles along the way, Verda Knox has never lost her will to fight, to survive and to help others do the same.

Over the last year, a few things have changed for Verda Knox.

For one, she is in a home. "I am renting a home, thank God for that," Knox said.

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SC woman helps over 300 struggling families in Texas on March 12, 2021 (WPDE)

One thing that has not changed is her drive to help others.

"I have been to New Orleans, Slidell they had the flood out there," said Knox. "We have been to Bowling Green, KY and Franklin, KY. And, we are going to take 2-26 foot trucks to them. We have been out in the Burgess area, a family there has lost their home."

She is still going through lung cancer treatments but her servant’s heart is beating strong.

ABC15 caught up with Knox on a cold day in Myrtle Beach while she was handing out coats and blankets to the homeless.

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves," exclaims Knox. "And sometimes, our neighbors aren’t just next door."

Her own journey has taken her down a difficult road from near homelessness herself to a near-death experience.

"I remember the doctor and nurses saying she flatlined," Knox exclaimed. "They said she is gone, they counted it out. In my mind, I could hear my sister praying - Lord, don’t take my sister."

But her faith has never wavered.

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"When I got cancer and God began to use me and I began to see the need," said Knox. "I came from having a car, a home, a job. My job let me go because I was out so much with chemo and radiation. My insurance dropped me, lost my car. So, I find myself living in this little mobile home with no lights and no water."

After a group called Serenity from Longs helped her get a car, Verda decided she had to pay it forward.

"I began to pray that God would put anyone in my pathway that I could be a blessing to," says Knox. "And that’s where it all started up for me."

One way she’s doing that now is by practicing what she preaches and loving thy neighbor.

"Neighbors helping neighbors is a group that was put together," Knox adds. "We are not a nonprofit, we are just people who love God, we are supported by so many churches and people who donate their time. It blesses us to be a blessing to others."

For Knox, ‘the blessing business’ has turned into a family affair.

"I have my brother-in-law right there and my brother behind me over there," Knox said.

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Her children help with donations, distribution and everything in between.

"I have 18 grandkids and two great-grandkids and I want them to see that one minute you can have everything and the next second you can lose it all," Know exclaims. "So, be grateful where you are at and show love and kindness no matter where you go. I want them to see that grandma did outstanding things not because of recognition, she did it out of love and I want them to do the same thing."

While she may not own her own home yet and is still living off of her disability check, she feels like one of the wealthiest women on the planet and the best part, is she is sharing her secret to success with everyone she can.

SC woman who traveled to Texas to help struggling families receives free dental procedures on March 24, 2021 (WPDE)

"There is no better love than the love of God," Knox exclaims. "That’s the kind of love I want to share all over the world. No matter what we are going through, it costs us nothing to show love."

In case you’re wondering, Verda is already in fundraising mode and collecting donations for her next trip back to Kentucky to help tornado victims there.

The group is in need of a box truck to help with its mission. If you would like to donate, click here.

If there is someone in your community you think should be a Jefferson Award recipient, nominate them here.

CHARLESTON S.C. (WCIV) — Wonderful things can happen when a community comes together.

Lowcountry non-profit, Metanoia SC, is listening to the people who live in North Charleston's Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood.

Over the past 20 years, Metanoia has been implementing programs to meet residents' needs to generate positive changes.

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Shawn Saulsberry is the Board Chair of Metanoia.

"It's a huge responsibility because Metanoia is literally serving the area that I grew up in," Saulsberry said.

Saulsberry remembers growing up in what's known as "Charleston Heights," or the "Heights" in North Charleston.

The community played an important part in his childhood.

"I didn't have the organization that we have today, but somehow I ran across those metanoia-type people who saw me, and they invested in me."

His grandfather taught him the importance of entrepreneurship.

"My grandfather taught us to work hard at an early age. He would let us rent the lawnmower from him, and we would go and cut grass in the community, and we would get to keep the profits," Saulsberry said.

Now, as a Senior Manager at the accounting firm Ernst & Young, Saulsberry uses his background of a strong work ethic to encourage the youth in the neighborhood.

Metanoia serves as a youth leadership pipeline.

"I'm not the smartest or the brightest, but I do know how to work hard, and I also know how to have endurance and not stop and just encourage them. If you do those things eventually, you're gonna find what you love. You're gonna find what you want to do in life, and it's gonna work well for you," said Saulsberry.

Metanoia was launched in 2002 by a coalition of churches across South Carolina.

By definition, Metanoia certainly works well with the community it serves.

"It means to make a positive transformation, kind of take upon a positive change of direction," explained Metanoia CEO Reverend Bill Stanfield.

Rev. Stanfield and his wife Evelyn live in the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood with their two teenage sons.

Before Metanoia's founding, the couple spent one year getting to know their neighbors and listening to their concerns.

"We really do believe people closest to communities know the solutions to their own problems," said Stanfield.

Stanfield saw this as an opportunity to build on the positive community members saw in their neighborhood.

And Metanoia did just that.

In addition to building leaders, it's the non-profit's mission to also establish quality housing within Chicora-Cherokee.

"We build new homes for some home buyers. We also build new homes for affordable rental, all within the community where prices are going up, and people are finding it hard to afford a place to live," said Stanfield.

The organization also invests in neighborhood assets. They support black businesses on Reynolds Avenue and have a partnership with a local manufacturing company to create jobs in the community.

"There's a systematic way of listening to the community and understanding what the community needs and then coming alongside the needs of the community and becoming an advocate for what the community wants to do," said Saulsberry.

If you'd like to nominate an individual or organization for a prestigious 'Jefferson Award, email your nomination to ABC News 4's Tessa Spencer.

CONWAY — Melissa Jefferson hates needles, so staring at them for a two-day procedure in September 2018 at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston caused reality to set in.

“My dad better know that I love him,” she remembers thinking.

Melvin Jefferson, her father, was nearby, a recipient of Melissa’s bone marrow due to a diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in early 2018.

It’s a disorder where the body no longer makes enough healthy blood cells in the bone marrow and can result in leukemia.

Melissa, the baby in a family of six children, was the preferred match.

The pain of a bone marrow transplant didn’t deter her, and neither did the needles.

“It’s my dad, and I want him around for a long time, so I didn’t have a problem doing it,” said Melissa, a former Carvers Bay High School and current Coastal Carolina track star.

‘It was going to be me’

Melvin initially had a stem cell match for the bone marrow transplant from someone outside the family, but that person was found to have sickle cell anemia, a red blood cell disorder.

He found more matches, only to suffer the same fate — issues with the cells that made a transplant too risky.

In situations such as these, family is always an option.

Melissa has five half-siblings from Melvin and his wife, Johanna’s, previous marriages: two sisters on her father’s side and a sister and two brothers on her mother’s side, all in their 30s or early 40s.

Both of Melissa’s sisters on her father’s side came back as partial matches when they started testing next-of-kin.

Melissa, just 17 and a senior in high school at the time, came back as a preferred match in August 2018.

“I remember telling my mom, I was like, ‘I had a feeling it was going to be me,’” Melissa said.

In September of that year before the actual transplant, Melissa had to go to the MUSC for further testing after they found out she was a preferred match, and was given a donor advocate and a donor coordinator.

The doctors there told Melissa she didn’t have to go through with it if she didn’t want to, but Melissa was determined she was going to help her father.

Pressing through

Melissa said that she wasn’t nervous until the day she actually had to go through with the transplant on Sept. 25, 2018.

During the transplant, she had to have an IV in both her wrists.

One IV took the blood out and sent it over to a machine that would separate the blood from the plasma in order to obtain Melissa’s stem cells; the other allowed the blood to go back into her arm through the other IV.

The transplant was ultimately successful, with Melvin staying at the hospital for the following 100 days. Six months to a year after the procedure, Melvin had 100 percent donor cells.

Myrtle Beach

Although he is still unable to work — he was a landscaper at Brookgreen Gardens before his illness — Melvin is doing much better and is going to the doctor less and less often.

Melvin had to get all of his immunization shots over again and still needs the shingles vaccine, and is not allowed to do certain things, such as digging, because of the chance of bacterial infection.

Melvin said his blood cell count is 13.7 or 13.8 hemoglobin grams per deciliter, just a shade under the normal count for an adult male of 14 to 18, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

When Melvin got out of the hospital, he had to wear a mask for roughly a year because his immune system was compromised.

This primed him for the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the U.S. in early 2020, as he was already used to wearing a mask in public at that point.

A blended family

When Melvin and Johanna first got married in 2000 when they were both 37, they decided that it would be God’s will whether or not they had a child together, already having five children between the two of them.

And then along came Melissa, and the Jeffersons had no clue at the time just how much of a blessing she would turn out to be.

“Who would’ve thought 17 years later, the purpose for her being born was to be my bone marrow donor?,” Melvin said. “I think about that all the time. Trust me, I really do. We don’t know what God has in store for us, but we always should realize that there’s a purpose he has for us.”

Melissa, 20, is the youngest of her siblings by more than a decade, with the others ranging from 31-40.

Melvin says they lovingly tease her for being the baby of the family.

Melissa has always held a special place in Melvin’s heart because she is the youngest, and is definitely “daddy’s little girl.”

Their connection is special, and always has been, with Melvin recalling an interaction from when Melissa was a youngster.

“When I had gotten dressed, I’ll never forget it, and she was a little girl, she was a baby, and (there are) certain things you do when you compliment people (that) children pick up on, she said to me, ’Daddy, you look pretty,” Melvin said.

“And I thought it was so cute because her saying that, not realizing you don’t tell a guy that he looks pretty.”

A love of running

Melvin said that Melissa would want to go everywhere with him when she was a little kid, and she would run around the house a lot, which is where her love of running began.

Melvin said she began running when she was 5 years old.

“She would beat the little boys,” he said. “We didn’t have to push her toward track and field. It was a natural thing for her.”

So it was little surprise for Melvin to see Melissa excel on the track at Carvers Bay.

For the Bears, Melissa was a four-time All-State and All-Region selection; a four-time team MVP; won the 1A state title in the 100-meters her senior season; and finished second in the 200 meters and third in the 4x100 relay at the state championship meet that same year.

Her junior year, she was a state runner-up in the 100- and 200-meter events was also a state runner-up in the 200 meters her sophomore season.

She also excelled early on in her Carvers Bay career, as she won the state championship in the 100 meters, 200 meters, and the 4x100-meter relay her freshman year.

Carvers Bay track and field coach Issiah Tucker, who coached Melissa from 8th to 10th grade, saw how the relationship Melissa had with her father helped fuel her to push herself to the limit on the track.

“Even though he was ill, he would be at the track meets supporting on his daughter, and (she) would look up in the stands and see her father; I think that motivated her more, too,” Tucker said.

Myrtle Beach

Staying close to home

Part of the reason Melissa decided to run track for Coastal Carolina was to be able to stay close to come while her father recovered from the bone marrow transplant.

Melissa found immediate success on the track as a Chanticleer, winning Sun Belt Freshman and Newcomer of the Year for women’s indoor track and field her freshman year in 2020.

The outdoor season was canceled due to COVID-19, but Melissa made up for it by doing well in the 2021 indoor season.

Melissa was named second-team All-Sun Belt for the second straight year and had a second-place finish in the 60-meter dash finals with a new personal-best time of 7.41 at the Sun Belt Conference Women’s Indoor Track and Field Championships.

She also ran well in the 200 meters, logging a time of 24.03, also a personal best.as well as in the 200 meters with a time of 24.03, also a new personal-best mark.

Both times were the second-best marks in the Sun Belt in each event this season and the second-fastest in school history, behind only Erica Peake’s time of 7.39 in the 60 meters and 23.40 in the 200 meters.

Coastal Carolina sprints coach Karl Goodman enjoys coaching Melissa because of her work ethic and positive attitude.

“She’s always ready to work,” Goodman said. “She’s very happy and she’s always got a smile on her face. I’ve never had to shout at Melissa for not doing something right. She’s very easy to coach and she wants to understand how to get better.”

Melvin was glad to finally be able to watch Melissa compete at a meet at the Alan Connie Shamrock Invitational at Myrtle Beach High School’s Doug Shaw Stadium on March 19 -20.

Melvin had not been able to see her compete in an outdoor event in college because of the pandemic, and he was also unable to see any of her indoor events this season because the venues either weren’t allowing spectators or were too far away.

While Melissa’s success in track and field has brought the Jefferson family a lot of joy, Melvin takes the most pride in the person that Melissa has become and that she has “never met a stranger.”

“Everyone should have a child like Melissa,” Melvin said. “Every brother should have a sister like Melissa. Every sister should have a sister like Melissa, or niece or granddaughter.

“If there were a lot more Melissas, this world would be a much better place.”