SC businessman Hipp, founder of prestigious Liberty Fellowship, dies at 80

At breakfast at the Aspen Institute in the early 2000s, Greenville businessman Hayne Hipp asked Wofford College President Bernie Dunlap if he’d ever thought of creating a leadership program similar to Aspen in South Carolina.

“Absolutely,” Dunlap remembers saying. “I have it on the drawing board, but it would take a lot of money.”

“I have a lot of money,” Hipp responded.

That was the start of what friends and colleagues described as Hipp’s greatest legacy.

Hipp, who died last Thursday, Aug. 27, at the age of 80, founded and funded, along with his wife Anna Kate, the Liberty Fellowship, a program designed to bring together people in mid-career to encourage values-based leadership across South Carolina.

“He was the embodiment of disinterested leadership,” Dunlap said. In other words, Hipp gavesomething and expected nothing in return.

Hipp’s grandfather started what eventually became the Liberty Corp. in Greenville. The business began in insurance and added broadcasting, including WIS television station in Columbia.

Hipp ran the company for 27 years before it was sold in the 2000s.

He was involved in civic affairs, helping to found what is now the Urban League of the Upstate and Public Education Partners. He and Anna Kate raised money for the signature pedestrian bridge over the Reedy River at Falls Park in downtown Greenville.

Jenny Johnson, a longtime Liberty Corp. colleague who transitioned to Liberty Fellowship CEO when the fellowship began in 2004, said Hipp played a big role in the Greenville community. But none of his other accomplishments were as grand as Liberty Fellowship, which Johnson described as embodying “the beauty of bringing together diverse voices.”

Dunlap said Johnson was responsible for selecting the fellows; Dunlap designed the seminars, and Hipp served as a mentor.

“Nobody else could have done that,” Dunlap said.

Hipp took fellows and others along as he hiked the 2,164 miles of the Appalachian Trail. He completed the hike in segments over several years.

“If he missed a quarter of a mile, he went back and completed it,” Johnson said. “He had maps of the trail all over his office.” He took copious notes.

Jim Stritzinger, founder of Columbia-based Revolution D and a fellow in the first class, said he joined Hipp’s hikes several times, relishing the times Hipp struck up conversations with strangers on the trail that usually ended with him inviting them to South Carolina. He was fearless and never complained, Stritzinger said.

“He touched a lot of people,” Stritzinger said.

Once Hipp finished the Appalachian Trail at age 73, he didn’t want to stop. He and Stritzinger set out to hike the 227-mile Long Trail in Vermont, from the Canadian border to where it intersects with the AT.

Stritzinger remembers the day they came off the trail, hungry, to eat at McDonald’s. It was Hipps’ first time at the fast food restaurant, and Hipp questioned the cashier about what a meal comprised.

He had the same questioning role with Liberty Fellows, but on much deeper topics, Ann Marie Stieritz, chief impact officer and a Liberty Fellow, said. He wanted to know what fellows believe and for them to be able to articulate why they believed that.

She remembers sitting with Hipp in the Shack, an outbuilding of his Pawleys Island home, where a seminar would be held.

“He always wanted to know what made people tick,” she said. Rather than talk about himself, he asked her about her grandparents, who were immigrants.

So far, 310 people have completed the two-year program, Stieritz said. The program is the only Aspen Institute affiliate focused exclusively ona state. Others are based on countries or on industries such as health care or technology.

Dunlap said people ask him how South Carolina was chosen.

“It wasn’t. Hayne brought it here,” he said.

Johnson said in 2014 Hayne and Anna Kate turned over the fellowship to the fellows.

“It was a vote of confidence,” she said. The program had reached critical mass, and the fellows had the drive and the talent to keep it going, they said.

Johnson said she thought it amazing that he could step away from something he had been so invested in. It was a reflection of who he was, a selfless leader who had accomplished something special for the state he loved.

“I miss him terribly,” Johnson said. “We all will miss him for a long, long time. There is not another person like Hayne Hipp.”