Sea Foam: Chart House memories live on after closure

Thanks to Betty Dirosse of Hilton Head Island for sharing stories about the old Chart House Restaurant at Palmetto Bay Marina.

Recently a reunion of former Chart House employees was held at the Beach Break Grill on Palmetto Bay Road.

"Yes, there was Mud Pie," Betty wrote about the oversized dessert that helped make it one of the island's most popular restaurants for two decades before closing about five years ago.

They surely swapped stories about a lot of the people who came for the salad bar and prime rib in the marshfront restaurant. It was on Possum Point, which is where the road ended until the Cross Island Parkway was built.

A lot of famous people -- including Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and Gladys Knight and all the Pips -- found their way to the restaurant, which has been torn down to make way for luxury condominiums.

The staff snuck Jordan out through the kitchen, but autograph hounds still found him. Betty said that Ali, who came to the island regularly for medical treatment, loved the salad bar and the squaw bread -- a whole grain and molasses bread that was steamed and served hot.

Tim Neil, general manager when the restaurant opened and now owner of the Beach Break Grill, remembers the night Mike Schmidt, Johnny Bench and three other major league Hall of Famers sat together at the bar.

Hall of Fame tennis players, led by Billie Jean King, came in for an early dinner during one of the last Family Circle Magazine Cup tournaments in Sea Pines to plan a presentation on how much women's tennis had evolved.

Ted Turner ate there a lot.

Bernhard Langer and Corey Pavin arrived right before closing one Sunday night. It was the day Langer won the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga. He went on to win the Verizon Heritage that week, and started a string of three champions in a row who dined early in the week at the Chart House -- followed by Fuzzy Zoeller and Davis Love III.

Love came in a lot during the Heritage to celebrate his birthday with family, Betty said. One year he brought the oversized bottle of champagne he'd won the year before in one of his five Heritage championships.

The late PGA star Stewart Payne came in one evening in his dashing knickers, and received a standing ovation from the diners.

Rock 'n' roller Billy Idol, actor William Hurt, comedian Chris Farley and sportscaster Jim Nantz all dined at the Chart House.

But Betty remembers the not-so-famous.

She remembers all the proposals made, with guys putting diamond rings in the Mud Pie. She remembers the locals who passed through as short-time employees, from artist Amos Hummell to a young Holly Cork who went on to become a state senator. She remembers how hard it was for the staff decked out in Hawaii-themed clothing to make it through their shifts the night a fellow waitress died during childbirth.

"I loved the column you wrote about the tearing down of the former Island Packet building off Palmetto Bay Road," she writes. "The human interactions that happen in buildings leave some kind of energy behind and you wonder what happens to it when the building that contained that energy is destroyed.

"Recently I saw the empty lot where the Chart House stood for so many years. That was my first job here and I was there for 18 years. In that building with that beautiful sunset view, human relationships (and, of course, human drama) took place and left their mark on all of us who met and worked there over the years.

"Since it was a place of employment for so many islanders over the years, me and Gail Neil, who is married to Tim Neil, decided this would be a good time to stage a reunion.

"So many long-term friendships and marriages came out of that place and those years, and we wanted to commemorate them with this reunion celebration.

"It was a shock when we learned the day after New Year's Eve 1999 that there would be no Chart House in the next century. The corporate office was closing us down. I still remember cleaning up and on the very last day standing at the hostess stand and seeing the last beautiful sunset I would see from the place that had been my home for those many years; the tears finally started flowing at that moment as that last sunset brought back so many memories."