Eliot Middleton (left) with Mount Pleasant Mayor Will Haynie at the All-America City Awards in 2018

A restaurant owner, Eliot Middleton, raises up and energizes a local community

Eliot Middleton was a little boy, he followed his father’s footstep

When Eliot Middleton was a little boy, he followed his father around everywhere, watching the talented mechanic carefully fix car after car. Less than a year after his death, Middleton, 38, now a restaurant owner in McClellanville South Carolina, is honoring his father’s legacy by fixing junk cars and donating them to people throughout rural South Carolina, where public transportation is sparse.

To get the cars, he trades a plate of ribs from his restaurant, Middleton’s Village BBQ, to anyone willing to part with a broken-down vehicle. Middleton also launched an online fundraising campaign to support the project.

“You don’t have a car, you don’t have a career. How will people who have no reliable buses, no Ubers, travel to the city, where they would be able to find bigger jobs at the port authorities or manufacturing centers?” Middleton said. “They can’t walk 40, 50, 60 miles to great jobs — they have to settle for small-end jobs that pay well below what they need to survive.”

So far, he’s collected 100 cars and surprised 33 community members with a repaired ride — without asking for a single thing in return.

“Giving someone a car can change all that, and it does change all that,” he said. “I want to help everybody looking to better themselves when transportation is what’s holding them back.”

In 2019, while running a Thanksgiving food drive, Middleton said he noticed that many of the people that lined up to get food walked miles to the destination. By the time they got there, he said the food had run out and they were forced to walk back with nothing.

After seeing the need for cars, Middleton had a lightbulb moment. Middleton’s father worked as a mechanic and he learned how to fix cars at an early age. He decided to use his trade to help the people in his community.

“Transportation is key in these areas. I want to make sure that the small guys [in] the areas that everybody forgets about, I want them to be able to be comfortable. It’s nothing special. It’s just being able to have the everyday necessitates.”

Middleton said he believes it’s important to help everyone, but he has a soft spot for good, hardworking people in the rural South, whom he says society often forgets.

“We need to remember communities that have been forgotten,” he said. “People recognize major cities and forget our rural towns and the people in them that need some help. They’re people, they’re Americans, and we should be taking care of them.”

For Middleton, helping strangers isn’t just something nice to do — it’s his calling.

Middleton has named his mission the Middleton Village to Village Foundation and hopes to one day move his operation to a building and start repairing cars for people all over South Carolina. He then hopes to expand to help people in rural communities across the country.

“If you can just fix one problem to somebody it gives them hope,” Middleton said. “Don’t think that something that you do, don’t think it won’t affect someone in a great way. Because the small things is what adds up. So just do whatever you can.”

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