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The University of South Carolina is seeking state funding for a new ROTC building that it intends to name in honor of the late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the school announced Friday.
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The Senator Lindsey Graham ROTC Center of Excellence, which would replace the existing ROTC facility at the corner of Pickens and Wheat streets, will serve the university’s more than 2,000 military-affiliated students and ROTC cadets in what university officials said would become the Southeast’s premier ROTC training and education facility.
While planning for the center is still in its infancy, the university thought it fitting to name the structure after Graham, a Carolina graduate and military veteran who died unexpectedly last month after suffering a tear in his aorta.
“He’s a two-time alum of the university. Obviously, a big supporter of our nation’s military. So, we thought this would be a fitting tribute to him,” USC spokesman Jeff Stensland said.
The ROTC center is at least the second military-aligned facility to be named in Graham’s honor since his death.
Earlier this month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth joined Gov. Henry McMaster and Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, who was appointed to serve out the remainder of his term, for a ceremony to rename Joint Base Charleston in honor of the late senator.
Graham, a native of Central in Pickens County who represented South Carolina in Congress for more than three decades, graduated from USC in 1977, and earned a law degree from the university four years later.
After law school, he was commissioned as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps and served as a U.S. Air Force attorney from 1982 to 1989, before going on to serve in the South Carolina Air National Guard and U.S. Air Force Reserves. He retired as a colonel in 2015.
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The university said it would ask the General Assembly for $20 million next year to support construction of the ROTC Center that will bear Graham’s name. The state’s investment will add to $20 million in federal grant funding the university has already received and another $20 million in federal funding it hopes to attain for the $60 million project, university architect Derek Gruner said.
While the building will be named in honor of Graham, pending approval of the board of trustees, the university’s plan to construct a new ROTC center predates his death by several years.
USC originally identified the need for a new facility in its 2024 master plan, due to the age and condition of its current building, Gruner said.
“We recognize that they’re in a building now that’s pretty old,” he said of USC students training to become officers in the Army, Navy and Air Force. “We’ve spent some money trying to repair it, but the thinking is that we could get them a newer facility that would better support their mission, have newer classrooms and be designed specifically for the ROTC program.”
Details of the new facility are still in flux, but the current thought is that it would be built in the same location as the existing structure.
“We’ll see what their needs are, and then make sure that that location is still the best option for them, the best for the campus,” said Gruner, who updated trustees on the project at Friday’s USC board meeting.
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