The only thing we had remaining in downtown Newberry was the opera house. “When all the (textile) mills closed in South Carolina, that left us with nothing but history. Wiseman called Smith in the late 1990s, but his efforts to renovate and preserve the Newberry Opera House date to the 1970s, he said. Wiseman’s goal? To convince Smith that she was needed in Newberry and that she belonged there. Wiseman said, ‘I have mint juleps and 65 degrees in South Carolina.” The promise of that oh-so- Southern adult beverage staple and the Palmetto State’s warmer climes led Smith to agree to – at least – come and visit. “It was really, really cold where I was,” Smith recalls. Then in 1998 during a particularly cold Vermont winter, Wiseman, a Newberry native and resident, called again.

Smith to Newberry and the Newberry Opera House early in 1997 from a cherished fund raising position with the theater at Vermont’s prestigious Middlebury College, she turned him down.

When retired dentist James Wiseman first sought to lure Deborah S.

Creative community spirit revives an opera house and a small Palmetto State community

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