By: Paul Kaminer
Hey, I’m Paul, and I made the decision to retire in Woodruff which is a pretty big decision for someone who had never been to Woodruff in his life before buying property here.
My wife, Becky, died on April 23, 2006. We were married for 30 years, two months, and five days and it wasn’t long enough. I was 53 at the time. My youngest son had just turned 14 a few days earlier. My grief was a long process, but God saw me through.
A few years went by, and I planned to retire at age 62, and I decided that actually, I could retire anywhere in the entire country I wanted since it was only me. I was born in South Carolina and grew up in Red Bank, west of Columbia in the Lexington area. As the years went by, I lived in Oxford and Calhoun City in Mississippi, Springfield, Missouri, Red Springs, North Carolina, and several places in SC. I made a shortlist of places I would consider for retirement: Laramie, Wyoming, Springfield, Missouri, Oxford, Mississippi, somewhere in either New Mexico or Arizona, or somewhere in South Carolina. There was no rush to make a decision, as I had several years to think about it. I was a professor at Native American Bible College in Shannon, NC, and planned to be there until my retirement.
In July 2009, I was on a vacation trip that took me to Michigan, around the Great Lakes, across Canada, to Niagara Falls, and was staying in Portland, Maine, for a few days. One night in the motel in Portland, I was online on my computer and on a lark, decided to key in “churches for sale, South Carolina,” and did a search.
There had been an old hippie movie released in 1969 titled “Alice’s Restaurant.” In the film, a group of hippies bought an old Lutheran church and turned it into a hippie commune. I was 16 at the time and thought the idea of turning a church into a home was about the greatest thing I had ever heard. It became a life dream of mine to do just that, turn a church into a home. For 40 years, from 1969 to 2009, I sized up every church I was in to see if it would make a good home and how much renovation would be required to do so. That is why in Maine, I keyed in my search for churches for sale.
A few churches popped up, including one in Woodruff, SC. I had no idea where Woodruff was, so I looked it up after looking at the online pictures of a Presbyterian Church at 300 West Georgia Street. Then I said to myself, “That’s just about what I’ve been looking for.” I thought on it a few weeks, called the realtor, and set an appointment for August 22 to see the church. I made two other trips to Woodruff over the next couple of months and, by Thanksgiving, decided to buy the Presbyterian Church, convert it into a home, and retire there. Part of the good news was that the cemetery next door belonged to First Baptist Church. Who wants to own a cemetery? I made an offer, it was accepted, and I set the closing date for January 2, 2010. December was a busy month for me. I had my college courses to finish/ Then I went to Iceland for a week, got back, and took my youngest son, Mark, on a week’s cruise to Alaska for his high school graduation.
On January 2, the Presbyterian Church became my future home which I named “Paul’s Palace.” I named my home because one of my favorite places is Bermuda, and in the country of Bermuda, everyone names their home.
Renovations went slow for most of five years, with me doing much of the work myself and working with contractors, which is hard to do from 4 hours away. The floor plan easily lent itself to a home. I mostly restored but added a few things, such as a garage and a mezzanine. The choir area became a kitchen. The sanctuary was divided into a formal living room, a dining room, a study, and a family room, with a mezzanine overlooking them. The domed ceiling has near-perfect acoustic sound, and you can easily talk across the house without raising your voice. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. For five years, my emotions alternated between “This is so wonderful to fulfill my life’s dream” to “This is the stupidest thing I have ever done.” Wild rumors circulated around town about the church being turned into a bar. I had one woman come to me and beg me to drop my misguided desire to make the church into a bar.
I was content to be single and fully expected to remain single and enjoy life in my dream home until my dying day. Content that is until May of 2015 when I got to know a sexy lovely widow, Katherine, whom I only vaguely knew from ministerial associations. (We are both ordained ministers.) We had a whirlwind romance (you can’t mess around when you are in your 60’s), separated by several hours with me in Shannon, NC, and her in Barnwell, SC. And her a New Jersey girl of all people. We walked down the aisle on November 15, 2015, and have been madly in love since.
Finally, we retired in June 2020 moved into Paul’s Palace permanently with its themed rooms such as an African theme in the family room, American Indian in the Parlor, Oriental in the formal living and dining rooms, Icelandic in the kitchen, Latino in the master bath, and Calla Lily for the master bedroom.
These two retired people love Woodruff and the people here. Woodruff is such a wonderful growing town. I made a great decision in deciding to retire in Woodruff.
So here I am in my dream home, with a wonderful wife, in lovely Woodruff.
Don’t forget to speak when we see one another.
Author: Tracy Sanders
