company, who bemoaned the fact that he could not sell the property. Ravenel immediately offered him $250,000. Tinking he was calling his bluff, the realtor told Ravenel to put it in writing. He reached across the table, grabbed a napkin and wrote that he agreed to purchase all the land that American Tobacco owned in South Carolina for the sum of $250,000. A few weeks later, Ravenel received a call from an attorney for American who wanted to know if he was serious. “Hell yes,” was his response. “Just give me some time to put the financ-
ing together.” Ravenel credited the late Harry
Hallman, former mayor of Mount Pleasant, for steering him into the role that resulted in one of the largest bridges in the world bearing his name. For over 20 years, local authorities had sought funding for a bridge to replace the aging and “functionally obsolete” Grace Memo- rial Bridge and its newer but still shaky sister, the Silas N. Pearman Bridge. Hallman convinced Ravenel to run for the South Carolina State Senate and explained how the cre-
ation of a state Infrastructure Bank could finance the new bridge and other transportation projects. With the bridge at the center of his campaign, Ravenel was elected to the Senate in 1996. A year later, legislation created the South Carolina Infrastructure Bank. Ravenel praised former U.S. Rep. Henry Brown for putting together its funding mechan- ics. Te Bank’s first project was a parkway in Horry County, followed by a $600 million bridge over the Cooper River. In 1997, the South Carolina
I t ’s obvious that Ric and Arthur Ravenel share a quirky sense of humor.
20
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