Mount Pleasant Magazine Sept/Oct 2013

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It’s a saturday afternoon, and i’m
sipping an iced coffee in the window of Starbucks
on Coleman Boulevard. A typical day in Mount
Pleasant, the road is abuzz with shoppers, bike rid-
ers and diners. I sit watching the smiling faces pass
by, imagining what errands these people are running on the
boulevard today.
It seems that everyone around here turns to Coleman
Boulevard for all their needs. A hub
of Mount Pleasant commerce, the
highway is home to restaurants, bars, boutiques, furniture
stores, exercise studios, supermarkets,
schools and, of course, people.
However, most local residents don’t
know “Coleman” is more than the name
of a street; the boulevard, once called
King’s Highway, was renamed in 1958 to
honor the mayor who was mostly respon-
sible for transforming Mount Pleasant
into the growing town it is today.
Francis F. Coleman was mayor of
Mount Pleasant from 1946 to 1960.
When Coleman began his tenure, the
town had only 1,500 residents. By the
time he left office 14 years later, the popu-
lation had soared past the 5,000 mark and its
infrastructure had grown along with it.
According to “The History of Mount Pleasant,” by Petro-
na Royall McIver, Coleman played a key role in improving
the town’s infrastructure. On his watch, roads and highways
were paved and widened, a fire station, a baseball field and a
public fishing pier were built and sidewalks were added.
“It doesn’t matter what year it is, the issues are all the same.
I’m sure Mayor Coleman had to deal with improving traffic,
construction, garbage and police just like I did,” said Cheryll
Woods-Flowers, who served as mayor of Mount Pleasant
from 1992 to 2000 and considered Coleman to be a mentor.
“We always used to talk over coffee and tea – Mayor
Coleman only drank tea – and he used to call me Madam
Chairman,” she remembered fondly. “He was always sharing
advice about governing with me.”
For Coleman, being mayor was all about giving back.
“I think every citizen has got to be willing to give
something to the community,” he said in a 1976 News and
Courier article. “When I was mayor, I gave everything I
had. It was time-consuming, and there were headaches and
heartaches, but I enjoyed it.”
According toWoods-Flowers, that was typical of Coleman.
“He was very much a trusted advisor to me,” she said.
“He liked to talk about his experiences. It was always a fun
conversation when I talked to him.”
In an undated interview, Coleman
told an East Cooper Pilot reporter that
his biggest accomplishment as mayor
was “no doubt about it … the four-lane
highway that extended from the Cooper
River Bridge over to the Sullivan’s Island
road.” That would be current-day Cole-
man Boulevard.
According to the interview, Coleman
had to maneuver politically with local
highway department officials and persuade
more than 90 percent of the town popula-
tion to support the project to get approval
for widening the road from a two-lane to a
four-lane highway.
“I think that’s one of the finest things we were able to ac-
complish during our administration,” he said in the article.
Today the only memorial to the past mayor and his
accomplishments is a marker near the Moultrie Shopping
Center. But according to Woods-Flowers, that is probably
the way Coleman would have wanted it.
“He was not a boastful man,” she said. “But he was a
great mayor and a dear friend.”
“If you didn’t know him, you probably would have
thought he was gruff,” she added. “He was a very direct
person, but I knew he wasn’t that way. In truth, he was
extremely kind and a valuable consultant for me.”
Photo courtesy of the town of Mount Pleasant.
Coleman
Feature
MoreThan the Name of a
Busy Boulevard
By TayLor GrIffITh
Francis F. Coleman served as mayor of
Mount Pleasant for 14 years and as a
mentor for at least one mayor after that.