Rocket, a State Fair icon, going up – literally
When it comes to iconic South Carolina images, it’s proving to be an up and down kind of summer here in Columbia.
First, the Confederate flag came down from its tall-pole perch on the grounds of the state capitol.
And now, the Rocket at the South Carolina State Fair is going up.
Literally.
Monday, the place of all places to meet your mother – at the Rocket – will be raised 12 feet into the air, creating additional visibility for the beloved ballistic missile that for decades has greeted visitors just inside the fairground’s south gates.
The raising of the fair’s quintessential rallying point is part of what a fair news release calls “the rocket enhancement project.”
“We had been talking for a while that the icon of the fair had sort of lost its place,” said Gary Goodman, longtime fair manager.
“Trees have grown up all around the Rocket and it became very hard to meet your mother at the Rocket when you couldn’t see it or find it. People of my generation, we all remember the Rocket as a meeting place. We’re doing this so the next generation can remember it the way we did.”
So, Monday, all 13,700 pounds of the Rocket will be lifted by cranes and a new base, already constructed, will be put underneath it.
“It will hanging in the air for several hours,” said Juana Quick, whose Columbia marketing agency, Queue, is working with the fair on the project.
The Rocket will then be lowered onto the new base, Quick said, and “a new park-like environment will be created around it, with benches and all, so that when people say, ‘Meet me at the Rocket, they can truly meet you at the Rocket.’ ”
The Rocket, named Columbia, is a medium-range ballistic missile and was given to the City of Columbia in the early 1960s by the U.S. Air Force. In 1969, the disarmed missile was erected at the fairgrounds.
Goodman, who’s managed the fair for 31 years, said the tradition of meeting someone at the Rocket probably began in the early ‘60s when a woman from West Virginia, who was part of a paging service, came to the fair to make announcements.
“She charged a quarter to page someone,” Goodman said, “and then the Rocket was put up and that became the logical meeting place.”
Goodman said the raising of the Rocket has been a community effort involving numerous Columbia businesses and the USC School of Engineering.
“It’s really been amazing,” he said.
Quick said the inside of the Rocket – a type of missile armed with nuclear warheads and used as a Cold War deterrent against the Soviet Union – has been inspected and all that was found was an old Pepsi bottle.
She also said once the Rocket is raised, an engineer has estimated that from a “flat terrain, there should be an additional one-mile visibility – perhaps more.”
“All the better for meeting your mother at the Rocket.”
Salley McInerney is a writer whose novel, “Journey Proud,” is based upon growing up in Columbia in the early 1960s. Ms. McInerney can be reached by emailing salley@hartcom.net.
About the Rocket
For years, the Rocket sat rusting on a trailer at the corner of Assembly and Rosewood like a very conspicuous guest that everyone politely ignored.
Apparently the Air Force gave Columbia the Rocket, a prototype for jet propulsion flight, because the Rocket was named Columbia.
Moving the Rocket to the fairgrounds was the brainchild of Frank Hampton, nicknamed “Mr. Frank.” For his last act as president of The State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina which sponsors the fair, Hampton had the Rocket moved to the fairgrounds, around 1969. It was erected there for about $10,000.
We’re sure Mr. Frank never anticipated the Rocket would become such a landmark.
From Staff Reports
One Rocket, two stories
Many memories have been been at the Rocket over the years. Here, two of them.
‘Art Hess, please meet Mary McEachern at the Rocket’
According to a New York Times article published in 1986, Columbia Police Chief Arthur Hess resigned from office in 1981, while appealing convictions for obstruction of justice and misconduct in office in a bribery case. He began work in real estate, and in 1985, Hess left his wife, faked his own murder and fled the state with a real estate colleague, Mary McEachern.
Hess would later be found at Disney World.
But before that fateful day in Orlando, the mystery of Hess’ disappearance swirled around The State’s political cartoonist Robert Ariail who, while at the State Fair, pulled a prank involving meeting someone at the Rocket.
“Hess and the woman were missing and nobody knew what happened,” Ariail said Wednesday. “I was at the fair and I guess my cartoonish mind just went to work.”
So Ariail went to the paging booth near the Rocket where a fairgoer, who wants to meet someone or reunite with someone, can have that person paged. The announcements can be heard throughout the fairgrounds.
“I had ’em page Art Hess. I had ’em say, “Will Art Hess please meet Mary McEachern at the Rocket,’ Ariail said. “There was an audible buzz in the air as soon as the announcement was made. I saw a lot of people just looking around.”
Ariail said an elderly woman made the announcement and didn’t bat an eye when he gave her the names to be paged. “She didn’t pick up on the significance of it, but I guess when you’re making 2,000 or 3,000 announcements like that every day, you don’t listen to names.”
Salley McInerney
‘Meet me at the Rocket ... for a wedding’
From a 1991 column
Wedding nuptials in front of the Rocket at the State Fair?
Yep. And if you know authors William Price Fox and Sarah Gilbert, say friends and family of the newlyweds, there shouldn’t be an ounce of surprise.
Fox and Gilbert became husband and wife Friday night as the crowd from the biggest-fair-night-of-’em-all looked on.
“I think it’s great,” said Tom Carzoli, a friend of Gilbert’s. “I knew it (marriage) was coming. I just didn’t know it was going to be here.”
Carzoli, a physician, received a wedding invitation in as different a way as the couple married – over his pager.
Fox, writer-in-residence at the University of South Carolina for nearly two decades, is the author of novels “Dixiana Moon,” “Ruby Red” and “Moonshine Light, Moonshine Bright.”
The author’s new bride, whose first novel, “Hairdo,” was published to considerable national attention last year, has been featured in national magazines, including Andy Warhol’s Interview and Vanity Fair.
“We invited only about seven people, but the whole town showed up,” said Gilbert, glancing at her groom and giggling moments after the couple exchanged vows.
Both the couple and their 29 invited guests dressed the part. Gilbert wore the same white satin dress her mother had worn 42 years ago, and Fox wore a black tuxedo. Both wore tennis shoes.
The couple originally planned a weekend wedding in Georgia in a quiet family ceremony, said the bride’s mother, Betty Gilbert, but there was a scheduling conflict with the judge.
Instead the couple opted for a two-part wedding. The first half, which included the exchange of rings, took place on a trolley as they cruised through Shandon. The second, consisting of the exchange of vows, was at the Rocket.
After they were pronounced husband and wife, the couple rushed off to the The North Pole and cruised around the children’s ride in a pink seal.
Quipped Gilbert’s youngest brother, Adam Gilbert, “It runs the gamut from tasteful extravagance to extravagant tastelessness.”
Lori Roberts
Fox died April 19, 2015
This story was originally published August 12, 2015 at 8:28 PM.