Paper plant a big Lowcountry presence
The Post and Courier
Monday, April 7, 2008
MeadWestvaco has played a big part in the weave of this place. It's been an employer so pervasive that most families in rural Dorchester County as well as the old North Charleston village have worked for the paper company or the old Navy base. The massive, fuming smokestack skyline of the North Charleston plant, the tucked-away sawmill in Summerville with its wood stacks just across the fence from neighborhood homes, helped make the city and the town. The North Charleston plant's odor used to be so pervasive that longtime maintenance metal worker Edwin "Sparky" Greer would hear it about as a regular jibe from his neighbors. "Oddly enough, sometimes you didn't smell it when you were in there," he said. The company is woven so far into the area heritage that Allan Luke, a grandson of its founder, was mayor of Summerville a half-century ago. It's been a fixture in the Lowcountry for so long that some families have worked there for four generations.
Read more in Tuesday's edition of The Post and Courier.
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