McMaster is the son of Creighton McMaster, and is in charge of the McMaster Enterprises businesses. He is also one of the members of a group, known as the Friends of Mount Zion Institute, who are looking to save the building and find a new use for it that will enrich the community.
In an exclusive interview, McMaster sat down with The Herald Independent and discussed the philosophy behind efforts to save Mount Zion, and why the McMaster family feels it’s important.
He talked about the history of the Mount Zion Institute, an educational institution founded when the nation was young, and the unseen impact of having something that important right in town.
The McMaster family has, for a long time, considered the importance of preserving Mount Zion. So much so that, several years ago, Bill McMaster worked behind the scenes and represented the family in efforts to get Richard Winn Academy to move to Mount Zion, a deal that ultimately, fell through.
But the family still considered the historical impact (and the potential for economic impact) that the school represented.
Before the creation of the Historic Master Plan, the McMaster family, in a letter to the Town of Winnsboro, discussed their vision for the Mount Zion campus.
“Winnsboro doesn’t know how lucky it is, and rarely do small towns that are fortunate, realize how lucky they are. That’s not to say (in supporting the efforts to save Mount Zion) that we’re the enlightened ones and everyone else is the barbarians,” he said.
“I think a lot of people thought Mount Zion was a nifty thing, but I think there was an exhaustion factor (in dealing with the building). There was also a fear factor, and that’s one of the things that so much, plays into in a destruction of progress.” he said.
He confessed that, in offering to essentially underwrite the preservation efforts at Mount Zion (the McMaster family has offered to fund the cost of replacing the roof and stabilizing the building, as well as matching dollar for dollar by challenge grant any money raised for the preservation) he has opened himself up to fear as well.
“I’m nervous as a cat about this whole thing. (The McMaster family) is about to put a tremendous amount of money on the line, and it may go down the drain,” he said.
“I’m working with a Town council that I don’t have a good feel for, I don’t know what their agendas are. I have a sense that some of their agendas are not especially positive towards my family, but that’s not the deal; I’m not trying to buy good PR. I recognize more than anybody, if the McMasters (participate in this effort,) it won’t raise their stature, it will lower their stature. There will be more resentment against the family. No good deed goes unpunished.
“So, clearly, I’m not trying to buy good PR…this is purely a sentimental play in our family,” he said.
So, why is McMaster and his family working to save Mount Zion?
“I don’t want to say this is a lost cause, but I have fought many lost causes to victory. I am not going to let that school go down yet. I just won’t,” he said emphatically. “I want to say we gave it an honest effort.”
McMaster admitted ruefully that there is a bit of Don Quixote in him, that he has tilted at windmills before.
“I have this passion about: ‘don’t let small-minded people cast vetoes on things that are really good.’ This is good for Winnsboro, taking Mount Zion and hopefully, preserving it, in phases if necessary,” he said.
Seeing the shadow of the wrecking ball and with a contract for demolition signed, sealed and all but delivered between the Town and the demolition company, McMaster negotiated what amounted to a stay of execution for the building. Duration: six months. In that amount of time, the Friends of Mount Zion Institute must present a plan on how the building can be saved and used, that the Town Council can live with and believes is viable.
McMaster believes that by preserving Mount Zion and making it a living, breathing place again, it can create or add to the “areas of unity” in the community.
“There are a lot of vertexes of unity in this community; the churches are one, the Chamber of Commerce is one, this newspaper, lots of things that tie the fabric of a community together, but a school was something that always did that.”
McMaster refers to a stud on historic neighborhood schools and the fights to save them completed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“Rehabilitating a school does tremendous amount to bring up the property values, and gives a sense of civic pride…the presence of bricks and mortar have a psychological effect on the people who are around it.
“I’m afraid what’s happening at Mount Zion is people are looking at it and saying it’s too far gone, but it’s not too far gone,” he said.
So the big question is: why are McMaster and his family willing to risk financial losses to save and re-purpose the school?
“It’s a risk-reward, I think. The reward to the community is so big that it’s worth the risk. Why are we doing it? Because we don’t see anyone willing to stand up and do it. We’d love for another family to stand up and say ‘we’re with you’. We’d love for SCANA to say it; we’d love the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce to stand up and say it, we’d love the merchants to say that, and we hope we get that. But there has to be somebody to stand up and say ‘I’m going to put flesh on these bones.’”
McMaster sees the re-use of Mount Zion as a location for a Midlands Technical College campus as a way to revitalize the whole of downtown Winnsboro.
“The family could go and build a building for Midlands Tech to come and put it out on the bypass, but that’s not our vision. I want it downtown, at Mount Zion, where people have to go downtown to eat lunch at restaurants, buy their newspaper here. It gets about 350 people (the approximate number of Fairfield County students who attend Midlands Tech now) here into the core of downtown. That’s as good as an industry; that’s 350 sophisticated people, 350 ambitious people, that we want into the town,” he said.
To sum up the McMaster philosophy of Mount Zion, it’s importance and what they see as its future, McMaster said: “Our visions is this is an historic town, with an historic institution, with a present need for a technical college campus…we want to preserve Mount Zion, and we’d like to preserve it with Midlands Tech on the campus.
“That will be a community center for years to come, and it just adds to the inertia generated by the college. I want people to be able to say ‘the program will be at the college’ or ‘we’re going up to the college tonight,’ ‘it’s going to be at the college’
“I want Winnsboro to have a college again.”
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