I was born here I was at first an Air Force brat.

Everywhere I went.

My longing was to get back to Conway, South Carolina.

I knew as a young adult that I would spend my life here.

It's large enough that there's so much to do and so much to offer but also small enough that you still you don't feel lost.

We love Conway, our businesses residential glass stained glass, restoration, church windows, and our customers are right here.

We're right in the middle of a residential Historic District.

I'm way is really special in the sense that it is a river town.

Our earliest industries revolved around naval stores and the byproducts that could be gotten from longleaf pine trees.

So things like rosin resin turpentine, especially.

A lot of folks had to travel using navigable waterways and the Waccamaw was certainly one of those that a lot of people used to transport goods and to travel.

Growing up on Waccamaw river, in my situation, I was kind of like Tom Sawyer, or Huck Finn, and I got to grow up and make a career out of protect in a place that is near and dear to my heart.

We are still small enough that people care about each other.

They say hello, when you meet them in the street.

They look out for each other in their communities and their neighborhoods.

It's close to the beach.

It's close to attractions.

Well, you know, I wanted to move to the beach.

And I had a 10 year old daughter at the time and she wanted to move to the beach.

Because you know, it's the beach.

And Ed said I think we need to stay in Conway because Conway is a great place to raise the family.

So we stayed here and we never looked back.

I love that it has the small town feel, but also it's growing.

Our downtown is extremely vibrant.

It is on fire.

We're at the point that we're looking at even building a parking garage, something that has never been thought of before in a place like Conway.

We've got wonderful institutions of higher learning.

We've got Miller-Motte.

We've got Horry Georgetown Technical College, we've got Coastal Carolina University.

The Chanticleer stands for strength and resilience and having each other's back.

And that's what we believe we are as a city and certainly as a university.

It's not all commercial.

But there's a natural beauty to this area to where we live just minutes away.

We are in the middle of nowhere.

While we're in the middle of nowhere in a beautiful neighborhood that only houses 40 homes.

We have the wetlands behind us.

We have a pond.

We have wildlife.

It's absolutely amazing.

Nature, the plants, the wildlife to use it.

A lot of them are very unique because they are adapted to Blackwater River systems.

And so the refuge provides a lot of the floodplain protection which is a kind of nature based solution to flooding.

But it also protects all this wildlife and endemic plants that are really unique to the east coast and black water systems.

We have all of that inspiration to work with within our stained glass realm that we do.

And people want those things in their homes.

There are a number of public use areas they're in these low floodplain areas that we've protected.

They provide nature trails, boardwalks, fishing piers, lots of public use.

One of them is wildlife observation and photography.

One of the things Conway is known for too are oak trees.

Many of them are 300 years old, and they are our oldest neighbors.

And we honor them.

They're actually tours that you can walk through and learn about some of the history of some of these different trees.

Hallmark wants to be like us.

At Halloween.

We go so far out that we've named ourselves Halloween, South Carolina the entire month.

And at Christmas time we become an absolute Christmas card.

I've seen so many different changes over the years here.

These people are my family who are here.

They're not necessarily the people that I'm related to but they are family to come back and make a career of protecting a lot of these areas and open them up for public use is really a special place for me to be.

It is really nice.

Nice to see a lot of it stay the same as it was when I was a kid.

The old trees, the oxbow lakes, a lot of these natural areas have shaped my life and hopefully they will be here for a long time to shape other people's lives.

Conway, South Carolina, this is our town.

This is our town.

This is Conway and this is our town.

This is Conway and this is our town.