By Stephanie Hunt for Charleston Magazine
It was a bright December day in 1975 when a spry 32-year-old Charleston native, a father of two young boys, took the oath of office on the steps of City Hall. The bells of St. Michael’s rang out with the deep tonal heft that comes from 220 years of bell ringing, chimes that had marked communal times of holiness, of warnings and war, of celebration. As he placed his hand on the family Bible held by his father, young Joseph P. Riley Jr. “looked out and saw citizens of all colors and walks of life,” he writes in his memoir to be published by Evening Post Books this spring.
