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The two-sided marker will bear the inscription:

McLeod Medical Center

The McLeod Infirmary was located here in 1906, inspired by the need to provide access to local medical and surgical care for the people of the region. Frank Hilton McLeod was born in Richmond County, N.C. in 1868 and graduated from the University of Tennessee Medical School. In 1891, he moved to Florence and chartered the Florence Infirmary. By the 1920s it was the third largest hospital in the state. In 1930, with the assistance of the Duke Endowment, McLeod Infirmary became a non-profit institution. A new building opened in 1935 and expanded capacity to 190 beds. Renamed McLeod Memorial Hospital in 1971, expansion continued when 14 blocks of Urban Renewal land were acquired just east of this location. The McLeod Regional Medical Center opened in 1979 with over 300 beds and improved acute care facilities.

This marker is the first to be placed in the core of the revitalization of downtown Florence.

At 7:30 p.m., the Florence Symphony Orchestra, The Masterworks Choir, and Soloists will present “It Is Well – A Healing Suite,” a commissioned choral symphony at the Francis Marion Performing Arts Center. The four movement work is composed by Dr. Brandon D. Goff, Professor of Music at Francis Marion University, and uses familiar hymns with texts centered on healing and comfort: There Is a Balm in Gilead, Abide With Me, Stand By Me, and It Is Well with My Soul. The symphony will be conducted by Dr. Terry Roberts and features soloists Roger Kirby, Gracie Myers, and Rebecca Thompson, and speaker David Hamilton. The auditorium will open at 7 p.m. for general admission seating.

These events are gifts to the community from McLeod Health and have no admission charge. Please join McLeod in celebrating 110 Years of reflecting on our past and caring for your future.

“We put Florence on the map as far as the church world,” said Owen, the company’s 61-year-old president. “It’s kind of unique for a small town like this.”

Owen earned a computer science degree at Furman University and recalls using an IBM 1130 computer that was only available to students after 10 p.m. when the school was done for the day. Solving math problems and playing chess matches on the keypunch computer stoked his desire to learn more and helped him decide on a career in programming. He also saw the need to gird his technical know-how with a structured sense of the business world and earned an MBA at Wake Forest University.

After grad school he found working for a multi-faceted consulting firm out of Charlotte to be less than ideal. It was very high pressure, he said, and overly aggressive. While he did have several solid years of learning various computer systems and how they interfaced with hospitals, he decided he wanted to change jobs and started looking at what might be open back in the Pee Dee.

“I thought, let me check my hometown,” he said. “I saw Computer Dimensions and called at the right time. They wanted someone to run the programming side … they were just getting started.”

Founded by Harris Rogers, Tom Rogers, Billy Campbell, and the Rev. Iverson Graham, the tech start-up looked at a church’s database and the bookkeeping side of things to develop what was known as an automated church system, which soon became the name – ACS. It struggled at times, but Owen said the founders believed in the company and provided key financial backing in lean times.

“By the mid-’80s it was financially stable and it kept growing,” Owen said. “For the longest time it was organic growth, selling to churches.”

A series of acquisitions in the 1990s expanded the company’s brand recognition and reach with offices in Arizona, Washington state and a regional hub in Greenville with 10 programmers.

“Our original mission was to provide software for churches, pastors and the computer person – that’s still the mission today,” he said.

There are some schools that ACS Technologies count as clients, but 95 percent of its customer base is churches.

“It’s a niche market,” he said, but with 320,000 churches in America, “it’s a big market.”

With service to 70 different denominations, ACS is known now as a leading provider able to provide constant support as the robust marketing and sales arms works to explain the newest cloud-based product, Realm.

“It’s another great growth opportunity – moving to the cloud. “With our new product, 4,000 churches are using it and we’re getting more market share.”

SCNow Web Article – Florence’s ACS has software clients around the world