What does a standout in Francis Marion University’s Class of 2022 have in common with some of the most notable figures in modern history?
They’re family.
Elizabeth Henry, who received her diploma at FMU’s commencement on Saturday, is a direct descendant of American Founding Father Patrick Henry. Yes, Patrick Henry of “Give me liberty or give me death” fame. Patrick Henry’s family tree is a virtual “who’s who” of historical figures. From Sir Winston Churchill to Billie Eilish, Helen Keller, Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, Walt Disney, and Gen. George S. Patton, just to name a few.
Elizabeth’s link to Patrick Henry is something others are more impressed with than she is; however, history is a major part of her present and future.
It was her major at FMU, with minors in anthropology and geography. Elizabeth plans to take a year off and travel to Australia and New Zealand with her father, Benton Henry (FMU Class of 1988). Then she’ll continue her history studies in graduate school.
Elizabeth’s current focus: German youth resistance to Nazism during World War II. Her honors thesis argued that youth resistance proved Hitler’s re-education and Nazification policies weren’t all that successful.
“Youth resistance was often overlooked, because they weren’t this huge organization that had united efforts and did these big, grandiose acts, like plotting to assassinate Hitler,” she said. “They were smaller. They printed leaflets. They wrote slogans. They held parties and had critical discussions.”
They filled walls with graffiti, risked arrest and even execution.
For Elizabeth, history was always one of her favorite subjects.
“To me, it’s all stories,” she said. “That’s history.”
Through high school, she was well-educated on U.S. history, but was grateful for the opportunity to explore broader historical vistas at FMU.
“I was super excited about entering college, because I knew there would be a greater variety of history courses to take,” Elizabeth said.
Three courses, including one on modern Germany, were taught by Dr. Alena Eskridge-Kosmach.
“I was impressed from the very beginning with her work ethic, how she was listening to the lectures, how she was responding,” Eskridge-Kosmach said. “I was impressed with her intellectual curiosity, her broad-mindedness, her ability to work with me as her teacher and her ability to do the work by herself to look for the materials to look for new angles.”
Elizabeth was looking forward to studying abroad, perhaps in Ireland, last fall, but COVID scrapped those plans. While she wants to study internationally as she pursues a master’s degree,
Elizabeth has already seen much of the world. In addition to last year’s travel, she has been to China, Quebec and Montreal, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein.
In China, she visited Shanghai and Beijing, from which she saw a portion of the Great Wall, and during a trip to the countryside, she saw the Terracotta Warriors.
“With my interest in archaeology, this was really cool to see,” she said. “It’s like a football stadium-size excavation pit.”
In Germany, Elizabeth visited Munich and nearby Dachau, the Nazi’s first concentration camp.
“It’s just one of those things that you have to see for yourself, and it helps you understand the magnitude of something that’s happened,” she said.
Elizabeth will be an intern this summer with the Marion County Museum and is looking forward to helping with an oral history project on Green Book sites in South Carolina, particularly Marion and Mullins.
She also plans to help Dr. Christopher Barton, an FMU assistant professor of archaeology, with some archaeological work at Jamestown, near Mars Bluff and not far from the FMU campus.
“It’s a plot of land that was historically owned by a black family shortly after the Civil War and has remained in the family ever since,” Elizabeth said. “There are few original foundations of roads and houses. One of the owners, Terry James, has worked with us a long time as part of the broader oral history project that we have here on campus studying slavery. Connecting this campus to history is very important.”
The straight-A student plans to get her doctorate after she decides between history and anthropology. First she will pursue her master’s in historic preservation. One school she is considering is Appalachian State.
“I’m interested in the physical preservations of artifacts, landmarks, buildings and documents,” she said. “I’ve looked into the possibility of becoming an archivist, because that’s actually a blooming field now with digitization. Records are increasingly deteriorating, and it’s becoming too tedious to keep.”
Elizabeth works part time at Palmetto Peddlers in Florence.
“I still tie in history,” she said with a grin. “It’s an antiques mall.”
Detrek Browning stayed true to FMU and became the school’s all-time leading scorer
In an early January game against Clayton State, Detrek Browning waited calmly behind the three-point line while teammate Brandon Parker battled for a loose ball in the lane. Eventually, Parker swatted the ball towards Browning, who gathered it in, paused to set himself and casually flipped in a three-pointer that etched his name into a prominent place in the FMU record books. With that relatively unremarkable basket, Browning became something quite remarkable — the leading career scorer in the school’s almost 50-year-old history.
That the record-setter came on a routine play is not surprising. Browning’s calling card as a player is his ability to score, seemingly without effort; to make a unique ability to find ways to put ball basket appear quite ordinary.
What was remarkable about the play is that Browning was around to do it at all.
FMU Basketball standout Detrek Browning
The dynamics of college basketball at all levels have changed dramatically in the past decade. Players move regularly and easily from school to school, looking for the next bit of slightly greener grass; and there is not much hard-working coaches and schools can do about it. Their path is fraught with peril.
Bring a player along too slowly and he will leave for a situation where he can play/shoot/start more often. But, bring them along too quickly, develop them too well – and this is especially true for programs at Division II schools like FMU — and bigger schools will come calling. They can’t recruit a player, per se, until he puts his name on the NCAA’s official transfer list (which numbers each year in the thousands) but word gets around. Pssst. If your name is on that list. …
After he averaged 20.1 points a game for FMU in 2015-16, officially his sophomore season, word got around to Browning. There were schools out there – Division I schools – who were interested. And Browning knew the drill. Friends, foes, even some of his teammates, had gone that route.
“I was hearing from a few people,” Browning says, “and people were in my ear, telling me to go, that this was my big chance. But …”
But?
Browning shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders. The big decision, he says, was really no decision at all.
“Man, after all (FMU) has done for me … I mean, they were there for me when no one else was,” says Browning. “And the people here have always been great. This is where I belong. I wasn’t going anywhere. I guess maybe coach was worried, but I wasn’t leaving. “
Gary Edwards, Browning’s coach at FMU, admits to some nervousness during the spring in question. But those days are long past now and recalling them now brings a smile to Edwards’ face.
“Detrek’s done a lot of neat things here, made a lot of big plays, and he’ll always be one of my favorites,” says Edwards, “but if you ask me what I’ll remember most that’s it. It’s that loyalty that Detrek showed. That’s a rare quality. It’s better than all those points he scored.”
Things happen
Maybe Detrek Browning never should have wound up at FMU in the first place.
He wasn’t exactly a secret coming out of Irmo (S.C.) High School, just north of Columbia. Irmo, led by legendary coach Tim Whipple, is one of the premier high school basketball programs in South Carolina and Detrek Browning did nothing during his time with the Yellowjackets to lessen that.
Browning played three varsity seasons at Irmo and helped the team win two state championships. In his senior year Irmo went 29-0 — Whipple’s only unbeaten squad in 37 years at the helm — and captured Whipple’s fifth state title.
Browning may not have been — may being the key word — the best player on a team that also included University of South Carolina recruit Justin McKie. But he wasn’t a secret. He was receiving significant recruiting attention by his junior year and had a number of Division I programs giving him long looks.
But … things happened. One program that seemed like a sure thing signed another guard and never called Browning again. Another changed coaches. And so on.
Whipple says it was clear to him — then and now — that Browning belonged on a Division I roster.
“Oh, there’s no doubt that the could play at that level,” says Whipple. “But you know, coaches look at things … it’s tough. He (Browning) was a little small maybe, kind of got in that in-between thing position wise. Was he a point guard or a shooting guard? He didn’t play much point for us until his senior year. But maybe he’s a little small for a D-I shooting guard, maybe he’s not that fast … So …”
So, early that year, one Edwards’ assistants at FMU saw Browning play and suggested the Patriots make a run at him. Edwards saw him and quickly agreed — “best point guard I saw all year,” Edwards said.
Edwards found out Browning’s recruiting had taken a funny turn and put on the full court press. When Browning came for his official visit, Edwards offered him a full scholarship on the spot.
Browning held out for a little while, waiting for the “better” offer that never came. Eventually his own good sense — all who know him see him as an extremely well-grounded person — and a little hectoring from his mom made him a Patriot.
“I kept thinking, ‘maybe a bigger school will offer me something,’” Browning says. “Meanwhile, mom is saying, ‘are you crazy? They’re offering you a full scholarship. They really want you. You know what? She was right.”
Red-shirt tears
One more test remained.
Though a polished player for a freshman, Browning arrived on the FMU campus to find Evrik Gary — the number three scorer in school history — already ensconced in the point guard role. Edwards and the Patriot staff persuaded Browning that the thing to do was sit out — redshirt is the term — his freshman season, just as Gary had done.
The move made sense, but it’s easier said than done. Redshirts spend all the practice time that regular players do but don’t get to play in the games, can’t even travel with the team to away contests.
“You’re really on your own a lot of times and have to stay focused to keep working on things, getting better, on your own,” says Browning. “That’s a good thing. There’s a lot to get used to moving from high school to college. It helped with basketball, with school, with everything. I tell everyone now ‘Redshirt. That’s the way to do it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.’ But it’s not easy. I’ll have to say there were a few nights where a few tears were shed. “
Conserving energy
One point — not the first point, but a point all the same — that Browning would make about his game, about the way he plays basketball is that he can dunk the ball.
“Most definitely,” says Browning. “I actually have two dunks in games (at FMU). I guess there could have been more — fans would like it — but it’s not something I was ever that excited about. A bucket is a bucket. I’d rather conserve my energy.”
Good at energy conservation. Now there’s a line that doesn’t show up on many scouting reports. But that aspect of Detrek Browning, basketball player, says about as much about his game as any. He glides around the court, under control, moving from place to place — moving from the right place to the right place — with a studied nonchalance that lulls opponents, fans and even his own coach into a state of disinterest.
“He’s one of those guys,” says FMU’s Edwards, “where you pick up the stat sheet afterwards and you say, ’Twenty-five points? How’d he do that? I didn’t see that.’ He’s very, very smooth.”
Browning’s chief skill is an absolute intangible. He has innate understanding of the game that allows him to see plays before they develop.
“It doesn’t just happen,” explains Browning. “I’ve had some very good coaches. And I do think about all the plays. I just think about them five or 10 seconds before they happen.”
Which is five or 10 (or more) seconds ahead of most.
Speed, shooting kill
The awards and honors are piling up fast in Browning’s final season. He’s been the Peach Belt Conference Player of the Week four times (through January), set the FMU single game scoring mark (41 points) in early January and is clearly poised to post-season accolades as well.
It’s all well-deserved, but still surprising all the same for Browning seldom looks like the best athlete on the floor. The 6-0, 180-pounder is a little stocky as basketball players go, and doesn’t have the chiseled musculature of some. His two dunks aside, he is not a great leaper, and he’s probably not the fastest guy around either, although as dozens of oft-burned Peach Belt Conference foes would attest, he is plenty fast enough.
Browning comes from a very athletic family. His mom (Carlissa), various uncles and aunts and cousins all played college sports. His brother is a good bit heavier than Detrek, “but can still beat me in a race. He can fly.
“My uncle (Milton Kershaw) who played football in college and is just crazy fast, taught me early on that speed kills,” says Browning. “It’s the most important part of most sports. But it’s not necessarily who is fastest. It’s who can be fast when they need to be.”
Browning is a fine defender (he will finish his career among FMU’s all-time leader in steals, too), but what sets him apart are his offensive skills. In Browning’s mind — a good place to start for analyzing basketball — the key skill is shooting. He has simple mechanics and feel for the shot that came to him almost from the moment he took up the game — he hit a long buzzer beater to win the championship game in his first year of organized basketball at age 12.
“If you can shoot the basketball, I mean really shoot it, you are basically unguardable,” Browning says. “Try to stop the shot and it’s a fake and I’m by you for a pull up (jumper) or a layup. Try to stop that and …. “
His voice trails off. Another basketball thought has popped into a mind that processes such information at an astonishing rate.
“It’s always amazing to me the number of basketball players — Division I players — really can’t shoot,” says Browning. “That’s kind of the point of the game isn’t it?”
The Gary plan
Browning plans to follow in the footsteps of his former teammate Gary and play basketball professionally for as long as he can. Gary has been on an oddball world tour since he left FMU — Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Dubuque, Iowa and now, Cyprus — but he’s got a suitcase full of memorable experiences and … he’s still playing. The dream is still alive.
Browning understands. He knows he can play at a very high level and is eager to prove it, even if that means traveling some strange roads and learning even greater patience.
Whenever that is done, Browning suspects his long-term future lies … in coaching. He’s a Dean’s List student who’ll graduate in May with a degree in Psychology, and reservoir of knowledge that he thinks will translate nicely in that field.
“I seem to have a pretty good understanding of basketball,” says Browning. “I think that (coaching) could work out.”
