GROWING FROM THE CORE: 1970-2000
If you’ve ever taken the U.S. Highway 15 bridge that crosses Prestwood Lake in Hartsville, South Carolina you’ve benefited from the handiwork of Sonoco founder Major James Lide Coker himself. In 1896, he had a wagon bridge built to ensure residents could continue crossing “the Pond,” as it was known at the time.
Now a four-lane highway, this wagon bridge project reflects Sonoco’s commitment to and care for our local community.
At the core of the Coker-Hartsville relationship is Sonoco, which as early as 1974 employed around 2,700 people in the town alone, with an annual payroll of $33,136,463.
As a key part of this relationship, Sonoco has long made a point of opening our doors to employee families for annual open houses. Many come for the goodie bags—filled with products we create—but most stay to get a real sense of where their friends and family members work.
In a letter to then-CEO Charles W. Coker following a Sonoco Open House in April 1977, Bob and Francis Floyd of Bon-Aire Filters, Inc. wrote, “The highlight of the afternoon … was when our children visited the Cone Department of your plant. It was most enjoyable to them to go with their grandfather to look at some of the machines in the department where he works.”
The other Coker-built institution to play a big role in Hartsville’s identity is Coker University. Started in 1894 as Welsh Neck High School, it became Coker College for Women in 1908, when South Carolina created a statewide public school system. In 2019, it was renamed Coker University. Today, community service and attendance at cultural events are key pieces of Coker University’s second-year curriculum.
Sonoco has always seen Hartsville residents as an extension of our own people. Historical snapshots of this belief in action can be seen throughout our history.
The May 1990 issue of Sonoco People mentions 36 “elderly, handicapped, or low-income Hartsville families” who benefitted from the efforts of 1,500 Hartsville residents (including three Sonoco teams) to repair their homes.
Just a year earlier, during the 1989 Christmas season, a “can-do” team of volunteers from Consumer Products dedicated themselves to the care of one “Miss Lula,” whose home had been ransacked during a hospital stay. They visited her a few days a week and ensured she had food and medicine. They even installed a new bathroom and repaired key structures on her property.
That’s the Sonoco way and the Coker way.
You can see the name Coker just about everywhere you turn in Hartsville. But it’s the ongoing bond between family, company and community that has laid the bricks.
