In 2020, Luke Hunter was working as property manager for Susie Rindal’s home in Flat Rock. As he helped clear scrub brush in the woods that surrounded her home, Luke noticed something about the contours of the land that evoked memories from his childhood days spent roaming the abandoned rice fields on his grandmother’s land just south of Charleston, SC.

A key part of Mike and Don’s legacy came to fruition this summer when the Friends of Carl Sandburg Mike Sollom/Don Hubbs Scholarship Fund made its first two awards to a pair of accomplished local students who share Don and Mike’s passion for the natural world.

From the time she was born, Marty Whaley Adams had a foot in two very different worlds. The first was her Charleston home where she was immersed in a life of gracious creativity by a mother who was an accomplished painter, gardener, and author. The second was at her extended family’s summer home in Flat Rock where her grandmother’s advice to a young granddaughter was simple and direct. “Marty, if you want it, make it.”

Reading the playbill for West Side Story at Friday night’s opening, I glance over a listing of the men and women who are the beating heart and soul of Flat Rock Playhouse. They are uniformly talented and dedicated to their craft. Together, they have built the iconic musical from the ground up. And, with few exceptions, they are virtually unknown by the audiences they so routinely thrill, amaze, make laugh, and move to tears.

This is their story …