CCU celebrates honorary founders at event
Mense and the Burroughs & Chapin Co. will be added to the list of 80 other founders and honorary founders who played important roles in the development of CCU and the promotion of higher education in the region.
Louis Henry (Hank) Mense is the president of Emenson, LLC, an ownership/management company for warehouse storage facilities serving the Grand Strand area of South Carolina. Born in Menomonie, Wis., Mense served 23 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, retiring at the rank of commander after three commands at sea. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
In 1978 Mense joined the administrative staff of Coastal Carolina College, serving as associate director of records, associate director of registration and associate director of admissions. He has also served the institution in a variety of advisory roles and has been instrumental in fundraising efforts as well.
Mense was on the board of visitors of the E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration, including a term as chairman from 1998 to 2000. He has served on the Coastal Education Foundation since 2001. He is on the board of advisors of CCU’s new Center for Military and Veterans Studies.
He and his wife Lucille have three grown children – Mike, Jeff and Lesa Carlisle – and seven grandchildren. Mense is a member and an elder of the First Presbyterian Church of Myrtle Beach. He is a past president of the Myrtle Beach Rotary Club and of the Dunes Golf and Beach Club, where he is a member of the prestigious Alligator Club-Member of Distinction.
Coastal Carolina University has been the recipient of many significant gifts from the Burroughs & Chapin Co, including the donation of 25 acres of the original site for the present campus in Conway. Over the years the Burroughs & Chapin Company has donated substantive gifts of money and property to CCU, including: 4.62 acres of land on Oak Street in Myrtle Beach for the Burroughs & Chapin Center for Marine and Wetland Studies; donations to the Wall College of Business and its Wall Center for Excellence; donations toward the construction of Wheelwright Auditorium; funds for the Cultural Arts Endowment and the Burroughs Distinguished Chair in Southern History and Culture; and donations toward the visit to Georgetown of the Freedom Schooner Amistad in 2002.
Founded in 1895, the company today known as Burroughs & Chapin is the largest real estate firm in the region. A leader in the timber, agricultural, mercantile and tourism industries in Horry County, the company has been a generous donor to the community throughout its history. Some of the company’s notable gifts include real estate for the creation of Myrtle Beach State Park (320 acres), the Cool Spring Industrial Park (391 acres) and sites for the Myrtle Beach Convention Center, the Horry County Department of Education and the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum.