SAM HAMMOND MEMORIAL AWARD
by
Kathy Pierce Haines

On May 20^th, after a 40 year hiatus, I returned to Stranahan High School to give an award in memory of a classmate, Sam Hammond, who was shot and killed by police during a peaceful demonstration to integrate a bowling alley in Orangeburg South Carolina. Sam was a freshman in college, a bright kid, with a promising future. As the story goes, Sam was not protesting, but he had just wandered down that night after dinner to check out the situation. Without warning, the police opened fire on the crowd, killing three boys, and wounding 27 more people. Sam was shot in the back.

To say the return to Stranahan was surrealistic is an understatement. The Awards night crowd was smaller than it had been in 1967, but the Stranahan auditorium was eerily the same.  While waiting for the program to start, the memories of that very stage whirled in my head: Showboat, Thespians, Calendar Girls, and that one and only speech I had to make, when I ran for class secretary sophomore year. I remember still, too well, that room looked so full from the stage, the shy 16 year old Kathy was TERRIFIED.   I vowed I would never again

do anything that required speaking to a crowd from behind that podium.  I talk way too much these days, the shy Kathy is far from 16 anymore, but I never spoke from behind that podium until Tuesday night when I awarded the first annual Sam Hammond Memorial Scholarship. It wasn’t my idea to start the award, I never intended to organize it, didn’t have time to do a good job of fundraising, but it all sort of came together, thanks to a handful of classmates and Marilyn Siadman, the BRACE advisor at Stranahan.

As of the week before, we had $100 in scholarship money, simply from the postings on the website message board. The Sunshine Club at Stranahan gave us $200 more. Three students were selected by a committee at Stranahan, each to get the award and $100. The weekend before Awards Night, I got three more $100 donations from class of ’67 alums. Sam would have been proud, and he would have liked these kids. 

Marilyn Siadman, the student advisor in charge of scholarships, gave each applicant a copy of John Bogert’s Daily Breeze column, the one that appears on Sam’s In Memoriam page on our SHS67 website. They were asked to write an essay about why they should get the Sam Hammond scholarship.

Robert Moise, a handsome young man who reminded me of Sam, wrote that reading John’s column made him realize how lucky African American student athletes are today. When the track team travels, they have access to restaurants, they never had to eat on the bus because of their race. He expressed disappointment that it took thirty years to acknowledge the Orangeburg Massacre. Robert wants to get an engineering degree and a future goal might possibly be to develop a vehicle powered by an alternative fuel source.

Another recipient, Kristine Carter, was a volleyball player, and hopes to become a sports medicine physical therapist. She hopes the money will help her reach her goal.

When Patrick Campbell read the story, he cried at the same line that gets me every time, thinking of how Sam bled to death on the informary floor crying for his mother. He said, “I get mad because not one time in any history book in all 12 years in school did I hear about this massacre.” Patrick’s last paragraph was particularly moving:

“In many ways I feel attached to Sam, like he was my brother. In the author’s words, ‘I feel like I have lost a brother, nothing has changed, not a thing.’ If I am awarded this scholarship, I will make sure his legacy lives on through me. His hopes, his dreams and remarkably short, yet remarkable life will never be forgotten.”

I’m sorry you all couldn’t be there. You would have been impressed by the Stranahan seniors. What an exceptional group of kids, I was moved to be a part of it. Thanks to John Binder for the idea, John Bogert for his columns, King Lloyd, Cindy Chamberlain, Deborah Thompson, Leila Kane Dickey and an anonymous friend, we have remembered Sam at his Alma Mater. Better late than never.