GREENVILLE, SC

As I mentioned before, EVERYONE who ever went to, lived in, or heard of South Carolina kept telling me that I needed to visit Greenville. Especially the downtown area where Falls Park on the Reedy is located. Yesterday, I did.  Wow.

Before the arrival of Europeans, Cherokees settled the area around the Reedy River. The first white settlements occurred in 1777, and the city of Greenville grew around the river when mills harnessed its power. Evidence of the mills can still be seen along the river today. Furman University built a campus nearby in 1850.

In 1907 the first idea of turning Reedy River Falls into a park was introduced. This idea had been ruined when the city began to become industrialized. Industries and even individuals used the river as a dump for waste and trash. The actual pollution hadn't ceased until the 1960s. Furman donated the land needed to set aside to begin Reedy River Falls Historic Park and Greenway.

Considered the birthplace of Greenville, the park was founded in 1967 when the Carolina Foothills Garden Club reclaimed 26 acres of land that had been previously used by the textile mills. Renovation accelerated in the late 1990s under Mayor Knox H. White when a developer proposed the concept of turning the park into a regional attraction. The development of the park began with a budget of 13,000,000 and was funded through the City of Greenville Hospitality Tax.

Beautiful flowers and plants are everywhere.

There are walkways and bike paths for miles.

Gorgeous

The falls

One of the pedestrian bridges with the colorful flags in the background

There are hundreds of restaurants and stores and many, many gardens that wind their way from this historic west end of downtown to the zoo.  The weather was beautiful so we found a restaurant named Smoke on the Water and sat outside to have lunch.

Our table where we could watch all the hustle and bustle of downtown.

The restaurant claims to be a barbecue restaurant but it "ain't" Texas barbecue, so I had their special of the day.  Chicken pot pie and bowl of greens.  It was D-E-L-I-S-H

We walked through some of the other gardens.  Everywhere you looked, there were photo ops.

My favorite flower

Another water feature

 

We came across this memorial (see below) as we were walking.  I love history and especially history about the time around the Cuban missile crisis.  Here's the story of Greenville's own Major Rudolph Anderson Jr.  The only combat casualty of the Cuban missile crisis.

 

On October 27, 1962, Rudolf Anderson Jr. streaked through the stratosphere, 14 miles above a planet tied up in knots. Twelve days before, the Air Force major had flown one of the first top-secret reconnaissance missions over Cuba that confirmed the existence of Soviet missile sites just 90 miles from the American mainland. Anderson was not originally scheduled to fly on this day, but he lobbied hard for the assignment when the mission was added to the schedule. Mission 3127, Anderson’s sixth foray over Cuba as part of “Operation Brass Knob,” would be his most dangerous yet, with Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) now operational and war seemingly imminent.

 

Shortly after Anderson entered Cuban air space, his unarmed, high-altitude U-2 spy plane appeared as a blip on Soviet radar. As the Soviet military tracked the intruding aircraft, their concern mounted that the pilot was photographing secret locations of tactical nuclear weapons positioned near America’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. “Our guest has been up there for over an hour,” Lieutenant General Stepan Grechko told a deputy. “I think we should give the order to shoot it down, as it is discovering our positions in depth.” With the commanding general, the only man authorized to order a surface-to-air missile launch, nowhere to be found, Grechko gave the order himself: “Destroy Target Number 33.”

Two surface-to-air missiles rocketed into the sky near the eastern port city of Banes. One exploded near the U-2. Shrapnel pierced the cockpit along with Anderson’s pressurized flight suit and helmet, likely killing him instantly. The U-2 plunged 72,000 feet to the tropical island below. Target number 33 was destroyed.

Military leaders overwhelmingly urged Kennedy to launch airstrikes against Cuba’s air defenses the following morning. The president, however, correctly suspected that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had not authorized the downings of unarmed reconnaissance planes, and he didn’t want to abandon diplomacy just yet.

For Kennedy and Khrushchev, Anderson’s death crystallized their realization that the crisis was rapidly spiraling out of their control. “It was at that very moment—not before or after—that father felt the situation was slipping out of his control,” Khrushchev’s son Sergei would later write. Kennedy worried that retaliatory airstrikes would inevitably result in all-out war. “It isn’t the first step that concerns me, but both sides escalating to the fourth or fifth step and we don’t go to the sixth because there is no one around to do so,” he told his advisers.

That night, the president dispatched his brother to meet with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and offer a top-secret deal to peacefully end the standoff. The Soviets agreed to remove their nuclear missiles from Cuba, while the Americans pledged to withdraw intermediate nuclear missiles from Turkey and not invade Cuba. The tensest moments of the Cuban Missile Crisis had ended, with Major Anderson the only combat casualty in a standoff that had the real possibility of killing millions.

When Kennedy learned that the 35-year-old Anderson had a wife and two sons, 5 and 3 years old, it struck home. “He had a boy about the same age as John,” he told his advisers. “Your husband’s mission was of the greatest importance, but I know how deeply you must feel his loss,” Kennedy wrote in a letter to Anderson’s widow, two months pregnant with a baby girl. Anderson posthumously became the first-ever recipient of the Air Force Cross, the service’s highest designation short of the Medal of Honor.

Memories of Rudolf Anderson may have faded, but he’s not forgotten in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. On the 50th anniversary of his death, the city of Greenville—in conjunction with Furman University and the Upcountry History Museum—unveiled the redesigned Major Rudolf Anderson Jr. Memorial, which was originally installed in 1963. Thirteen engraved granite slabs embedded in the lawn describe each day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and surrounding an F-86 Sabre Jet, similar to one flown by Anderson, are text panels describing his boyhood, his distinguished military career and his lasting legacy of contributing to the peaceful resolution of the crisis. It was very interesting.