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Pictured behind the menu at Flatwood Grill is the Flatwood Peaches baseball team. Hendrix is the player standing fifth from the left.
Photo by Diane Veto Parham
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"When you play ball for 10 years, and baseball is the chief thing in the community, you get to know people," F.E. Hendrix says of his efforts to memorialize the people and the town of Flatwood. "I felt like they adopted me, and I adopted them."
Photo by Diane Veto Parham
When Francis Earle "F.E." Hendrix played first base for the Flatwood Peaches baseball team in 1952, he never imagined that his team’s photo might one day welcome airline passengers to South Carolina.
Hendrix and his smiling teammates are featured on the menu board of the new Flatwood Grill at GSP International Airport in Greer. The restaurant, located in the newly renovated baggage claim area, pays homage to a close-knit farming community that disappeared when the airport was built on the property in 1962 and BMW built its plant nearby in 1992.
Hendrix, a member of the Laurens Electric Cooperative Board of Trustees, has become the unofficial historian of Flatwood, campaigning to keep memories of the town alive. In 1999 Hendrix convinced BMW and GSP to erect a granite historical marker to the village and signage designating BMW’s recreation area as Flatwood Fields.
“Something needed to be done—I could see the name Flatwood disappearing,” he says.
When GSP began terminal renovations, Hendrix worked with airport officials to create another tribute to Flatwood. In addition to the menu board, a plaque in the new restaurant celebrates the village where farming, mill work and Saturday baseball were mainstays.
With the restaurant’s airport location, “Thousands of people will pass by and see the name of Flatwood,” Hendrix says.