On a Cold January Night in 1987, a Spree of Vandalism by Three Youths Ended with Woodruff’s Beloved High School Engulfed in Flames and a Group of Proud Wolverines Risking Their Lives to Save its History from the Midst of the Inferno
By: Garrett Mitchell, Staff Writer
In Greek mythology, there is a tale of a magnificent bird known as the Phoenix, the symbol of renewal and rebirth. Upon its death, a Phoenix would be consumed by fire only to rise again from the ashes, born anew from the flames.
The night of January 11th, 1987, witnessed Woodruff’s Phoenix, its beloved high school, consumed in a fiery conflagration. Still, a few brave souls would be the salvation of its history from which the new symbol of our town would be resurrected from the smoldering remains.
For there to be a rebirth, there must first be a death.
On that cold, wintry night, Terry Cox never imagined that as the sun waned below the horizon that in only a few hours, he and Coach Varner, along with an unheralded band of heroes, would risk their own lives so that the historical lifeblood of Woodruff High School would live on.
During the early morning hours, three local youths engaged in a spree of vandalism targeting all four schools in town put their final egregious act into motion. After breaking a window to enter the high school, they ignited a small fire inside the building before the trio fled into the darkness.
Unbeknownst to them or anyone else, a few sparks were pulled into the school’s air ducts and set into motion a chain of events that would both devastate and define the indomitable spirit of Woodruff.
Terry Cox had not planned to be awake during those wee hours but summoned from his bed to the kitchen of his parents’ home across the street from the school on Cross Anchor Road, the quarterback of the Wolverines’ 1978 state championship football team joined his father at the window as the elder Cox mused about the return of winter weather.
Or so it briefly seemed.
“I was engaged, but I was living at home and working as a supervisor for Inman Mills and was off that night,” recalled Cox. “Dad had gotten up to get a glass of water, and he looked out the window, and I don’t know what made me get up, but I had gotten up also. He said, ‘Doggone Terry, I just looked out the window, and it’s snowing.'”
Cox took only a moment to realize that what his father mistook as snowflakes were something far more sinister than a passing flurry.
“I looked out the window, and I said, ‘Pops, it’s not snowing, the school’s on fire.'”, he continued. “It was the ash falling. It was drifting over to our yard, and you could see the ash and embers falling in our yard. I went to the front door and said, ‘Lord, have mercy.’ I just put on my jeans and clothes and just ran over there.”
Meanwhile, less than a mile away on La Salle Court, word the school was burning had reached Coach Varner at his home, too.
Toni Sloan will never forget hearing her mother Frances’ voice on the other end of the phone that night.
“I remember Mom calling, and she said, ‘Your Dad’s at the school. It’s burning’. And I thought, what do you mean it’s burning?'”, she said. “And Mom said, ‘It’s on fire.’ We immediately left and came down here, and by that point, there were already a lot of people working to salvage and save, and the fire department was down here.”
The Woodruff High School gym has always had a certain degree of majesty attached to it. Some affectionately call it a museum. It is an accurate moniker because, well, that is precisely what it is and has always been.
A tradition started by Coach Varner, the walls of Woodruff’s gym are a living tapestry to the life of an athletic program with an infinitely rich history and sense of pride. Photos adorn the walls commemorating every championship team, each team that competed for a title, or the inaugural squad representing Woodruff High in each sport.
Generations of Wolverines have their names enshrined on plaques covering the walls and every corner of the building, showing accomplishments from intramural sports to official team endeavors.
Grandfathers, fathers, husbands, sons, grandmothers, mothers, wives, and daughters have their litany of achievements displayed for all who visit to see. It has always been a way for Woodruff to bridge the generational gap for a school whose story dates back over a century.
As the flames grew and with the school quickly turning into an inferno, that history was in mortal danger of being reduced to nothing more than piles of ash and all tangible traces of what was and what had been, were going up in thick, acrid smoke.
Cox reached the burning building and saw an opening. By sheer luck, the flames had not yet made it to the gym by the time he arrived, but the time to act was growing short. Terry never hesitated.
“The glass on one of the front doors was broken, and I remember just going through, and the flames were already pretty good where, I guess the chemistry room was, and the flames were already starting to come out the windows up top, so I just went through that window and door right there,” explained Cox. “I opened that door, and I went down into the locker rooms to start with, and I was pulling out the uniforms.”
When he entered the school for a second time, Cox was met by a familiar face. Coach Varner had made his way inside as well, and the two were joined by another of Varner’s former players, Jeff Page.
After saving teams’ uniforms, Cox, Varner, and Page turned their attention to the photos and plaques hanging on the gym wall.
Cox continued, “We got some of (the photos) out to start with, but the main gym and some of the locker rooms were one of the only parts (of the school) that did not burn all the way to the ground. I can’t remember how many pictures, but there was an old wooden ladder there. We threw it up against the wall, knocked some of them down, and went out the door with them. The wall closest to the main lobby, we did get some of the pictures there and, you know, with the fire department, and what they were doing, they salvaged the rest of the pictures and all of the plaques.”
Meanwhile, Sloan knew her dad was inside the burning school, completely engulfed in flames reaching ever closer to the gym and front office.
Terrified for his safety, Toni consoled herself knowing that if the worst happened, her dad would go while fighting to save what he had worked his entire adult life to build.
“I remember the fire department trying to keep him from going back inside, which was a futile effort,” said Toni. “It was history. It was records, memories, and all those things wrapped up into one. We didn’t have computers and technology then that we do now. It was all hand-written, mostly by daddy, in files, and on walls. That was his community’s pride. That was their memories, and his, and they were willing to do whatever necessary to pull it off the walls or haul it out of the office to safety so that those records and memories were not gone forever.”
Cox estimates that he, Varner, Page, and others went in and out of the school multiple times over a period that neared an hour, in defiance of the firefighters that tried in vain to keep them outside of the now-crumbling walls.
But Cox and Varner managed one final, harrowing trip inside the gutted school to save the last armful of precious items.
“I know it was 40 to 45 minutes, in that neck of the woods, that we kept going in,” added Cox. “You couldn’t see up the hallways, and you couldn’t have gotten into the main school. We tried to go and did go, to the main office. I remember that. I remember Coach Varner going into the main office. I don’t know what he got out of there, but then we came back down the hall, and I told Coach, let’s try to get some of these trophies. I busted the main trophy case, and we took out four or five trophies, and it was getting to the point where you really couldn’t see. The flames were down to about where the main office was, and it got to the main office area and started filling the gym up with smoke. The fire was almost in the main lobby when we finally went out the back door.”
Cox tried once more to go back, only to be stopped by Varner.
“It was really bad by that point, and Coach Varner finally just said, ‘Terry, we’re not going back in. Let’s just let it go.’,” he said.
Having to concede that the school was lost, said Sloan, was among the most challenging moments of her father’s life. The look on Varner’s face when the realization set in that nothing more could be done, said Toni, is one she will remember for the rest of her life.
“That look on my dad’s face is one that I will never forget,” Toni said. “It looked like he was losing his best friend. I remember the tears rolling down his face as he stood back and watched what he had devoted his life to burn.”
But Toni added that her father was forever grateful that his former players had risked their own lives to save the history which they, too, had helped create.
“It was hard to keep him from going in again, but he knew that ultimately those memories were not worth a life,” she said. “It made him proud to know those guys were willing to sacrifice their safety for their contributions here, but to have to tell them not to go back inside; I know it was hard for him to do.”
By the time the sun began to rise, the fire departments had finally extinguished most of the blaze. All that was left to do was start the agonizing process of sifting through the rubble and reassembling the shattered pieces of Woodruff High School.
Cox, Page, Varner and the rest who had braved the hellish heat and flames had managed to save most of the school’s athletic uniforms, a majority of the photos and plaques from the gym walls, a number of the school’s championship trophies, and all of Varner’s hand-written athletic records.
It was a miraculous intervention in the face of overwhelming odds, but again, that was always the Wolverine way.
Still, not all were rescued.
Three decades’ worth of Woodruff football game film was lost in the fire, as were several of Varner’s championship rings. Not saving the film was Cox’s only regret from that night.
“I think I just wanted to do as much as I could to save as much of the history as I could,” Cox said. “I hate we couldn’t get out the game film. That was one thing we were trying to do. Coach Varner had them locked up, but the smoke got so bad, and you know, that was one thing we were trying to get to, but we never could. I would have liked to have shown my kids sometimes what their dad did back in the day.”
A small number of the team photographs were unable to be removed from the gym during the chaos. They were taken down from the smoldering ruins the next day, intact but bearing the scars of what had transpired.
Thirty-five years later, those few photographs are still stained yellow from the smoke and water, with faces and names mostly illegible now. Still, it is a constant reminder of what happened on January 11th, 1987. It speaks loud and clear of the heroes who risked everything to save their school’s history.
There were no computers and hard drives back then that could have been a place of safekeeping, and nothing claimed by the firestorm could have been replaced or returned.
Those constant, physical reminders that don the surfaces of those old relics of Wolverines’ past help keep the memory alive said Sloan.
“In the aftermath of it all, I remember Daddy and the fire authorities had a fit because he came back to the old gym. It had cracks in the wall you could put your fist in, and he had a ladder and was getting those plaques and those photos off the wall,” Toni said. “The floor was saturated with water, and to me, that’s what is so priceless about some of those photos, because you can see the smoke and water damage that is still there. It’s a living reminder of what took place.”
But remember the story of the Phoenix? The legend says that only one Phoenix can live at any time, and it must be consumed by fire before it can be born again.
And just like the Phoenix, so, too, would Woodruff High School rise from the ashes. The conception began with the next day’s sunrise, an omen perhaps, of the magnificent transformation that was to come.
“People were standing around crying and in disbelief over what was happening. Most of the older people had gone to school there. It was just a very sad night,” Cox said. “But when the sun came up, it was a bright, blue day. I remember that. It was like a cleansing or new beginning like the Lord was looking down on us.”
Contributions poured in everywhere to help Woodruff get its high school up and running again.
Neighboring schools and towns donated textbooks and supplies to replace those that had been destroyed, the other schools in town opened their doors to the high school’s students so they could have a place to learn. After lead singer Kevin Cronin read about the fire, the world-famous rock band REO Speedwagon played a benefit concert for Woodruff at Clemson’s Littlejohn Coliseum to help offset the cost of the new school.
It was a total team effort, in true Wolverine spirit.
And slowly, indeed, a new building took shape.
“I will say, it brought the community back together at a time when people weren’t seeing eye to eye,” Cox added. “I think ultimately, it brought the town back together.”
Sloan even has some fond memories of that time.
“It made Daddy feel good to see the community rally around what meant so much to him,” she said. “It made him feel good to see that unity and everyone coming together. They moved a lot of the high school students into the elementary school. One end was the high school, and the other was the elementary school, and we called it ‘Ele High.'”
The deep wounds seared into the flesh of the town by the fire and loss of the high school began to heal over time. Those responsible were brought to justice for their actions, the Wolverine sports teams returned to the courts and the fields, and pupils continued to learn, albeit in modified settings for a bit.
In August of 1989, almost 31 months to the day of the fire, the new Woodruff High School opened its doors to students for the first time.
Out of the flames and beneath the ashes, a new legacy was born, merged with the old, to complete the circle fully. And quite literally so. The new building was built around several surviving classrooms in a symbolic gesture to connect both the old and new high schools with one another.
In the new gym, the team photos, plaques, and trophies, history saved from the infernal onslaught by those few brave souls, christened the walls once more.
Toni said her dad always taught her to see the good in every situation. Varner’s heartbreak as he watched the high school be reduced to embers on that cold January night was abated by the joy it afforded him in the months that followed.
“That was probably one of the most devastating events in my Daddy’s life, but he came away from it, and he always said to me afterwards, you got to find the good in everything that takes place,” she said. “And at the time (his granddaughter), Jessica was at the primary school, and his ‘good’ was the mere fact that he was on the other end of the building I was in. She came through and would sit down in his office on his leg every morning before walking over to the primary school. And he said that was God’s gift to him from the fire.”
Seeing his young granddaughter every morning, just starting her journey, was Varner’s rebirth and his greatest joy during that time.
For the town of Woodruff, it was the coming together of thousands to restore what had been so callously taken away.
The final piece of the legend says each Phoenix lives 500 years before it is taken by its fiery end. If you are inclined to put stock into such notions, then, just maybe, there are a few Wolverines who might have that long, too.
Author: Tracy Sanders
