Keeping and Cultivating Charm in Chapin
Although I have lived in Chapin nearly 30 years, I readily admit, I am still not from Chapin. That designation is reserved for people who have lived here for generations. The only family connection I can claim is through an uncle by marriage, H. B. Betchman, his parents, whose home I visited on Columbia Avenue; and his sister and her husband: Annie and Lonnie Fulmer.
I grew up in the small town of Summerton, SC, (next door to the Betchmans.) As a child, I loved the ability to walk or ride my bike anywhere I wanted to go. I also loved that all business was personal. The people I knew as my doctor, grocer, pharmacist, plumber, and electrician were also the people I knew from church, and the parents of my friends... I knew almost everyone in town personally.
I moved to Chapin because my log cabin home virtually fell into my lap. A neighbor mentioned he was thinking of selling their weekend cottage. I had an “empty nest” and was ready to try lake living. The opportunity to live on the water was appealing, but another attraction was to, again, live in a small town. I loved and still love the feeling of small towns and the people “doing life together.” Chapin is that kind of welcoming community, even towards people like me, who live just outside of the town limits.
Lil’s log cabin
Martin Chapin moved to our area and established the Town of Chapin on his doctor’s advice to live where there are lots of trees to help his respiratory problems. Today, we often hear people express the desire to sustain the small-town feel of Chapin, even as it’s growing so rapidly. We are challenged by how to keep Chapin’s small town charm (and trees) but also create room for growth. Can we have it all?
One way to ensure Chapin’s small-town charm is to demonstrate a welcoming attitude in churches, schools, and businesses and in civic and non-profit organizations. Such hospitality can also be showcased via transparency in our local government and through openness to ideas and participation.
But how can we keep a small town feeling in our physical structures? Perhaps we have to make our top priority building and sustaining a community focused on livability. A community improves its livability when it’s easy and safe to get around walking and biking. A livable community maintains space for meeting each other, both for playing and working together––a space with shade trees and plants that provide color in our lives.
Community activities that invite our connecting with each other like farmers’ markets, street fairs and celebrations, school and recreational sports, community theatre, and choral groups all improve livability and require investment, the creation and the maintenance of space within which we can enjoy life together.
In Chapin, the investment in connection extends to the caring actions we see within churches and even more in the things churches and the community choose to do together: We Care, Good Works, the Free Clinic, the 5th Sunday services that move from church to church. The message–– not limited to small towns but perhaps easier to see from within one–– is that we do care—about people and the places where we all live, work and play.
For me, feeling “at home” in Chapin is very much tied to these kinds of opportunities to participate, in the old 2016 Committee and in the newer Chapin Beautification Foundation. It includes singing with Dutch Fork Choral Society, playing tennis at Crooked Creek Park, volunteering with Chapin Community Theatre, serving on the Chapin High School SIC or planting sequoia trees with the students in the Academic Leadership Academy. My investment in building our community leads to advocating for sidewalks and bike paths, protecting and planting trees, working toward creating public transportation to, from and within Chapin.
“The message–– not limited to small towns but perhaps easier to see from within one–– is that we do care—about people and the places where we all live, work and play.”
A recent project that helped to bring our town together was The Chapin Sequoias Standing Tall project. The idea originated from a Readers’ Digest article called “Why 2014 will be better than 2013,” which included people planting sequoia trees. As I read more about sequoias, I talked about planting sequoias in public places in Chapin, and the idea immediately caught fire. Students at Chapin High School were eager to implement a project with the support of community volunteers. I have come to believe that the four project objectives for that job are worthy of being goals for our entire town:
· Find something we can all be for and accomplish only by working together.
· Do something that would be unique and attract people to our community.
· Add something that would enhance both the beauty and health of our town.
· Think long-term—what we will do today for the good of our children, grandchildren, and generations to come.
Admiring a Sequoia in Chapin
We ended that two-year student project with 41 sponsored and marked trees (the markers were made by metal-working students at CATE) in locations symbolizing all aspects of our town—education, government, business, faith communities, recreation, non-profit organizations, and neighborhoods. The trees are living evidence and reminders of the town we want Chapin to be.
