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She caught their midday "knocking off time" from picking tomatoes for 10 cents a basket.
After maneuvering through the sand in her husband's station wagon, Campbell unloaded a menu that might include butter beans, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, fish, white rice, yellow rice, red rice, potato pone or bread pudding.
Today, the tomato fields are covered with homes and golf courses in Hilton Head Plantation.
And at 91, Campbell's lunchtime has come full circle. Someone brings her a hot lunch every weekday. It's a Meals on Wheels volunteer.
"That's my cornbread man," Campbell says with a laugh when she hears the tap on the door of her Spanish Wells Road home.
Meals on Wheels volunteers have been tapping on doors in southern Beaufort County for 30 years.
They deliver a hot meal -- meat or fish, a starch, a vegetable, bread and butter, juice or milk, and a choice of a dessert, fresh fruit or canned fruit. Clients who can afford it pay $3.50 a day. Those who can't -- and that's about 80 percent of them -- get a free lunch, thanks to a number of institutions and individuals who care enough to help their fellow man.
Something else is delivered as well. Volunteers bring a brief, daily "hello." The volunteers might be the only social contact the client has. Sometimes a volunteer discovers an elderly client who has fallen out of a bed or chair. With this contact, many are able to stay in their own homes rather than a nursing home.
Even more subtle is this: Meals on Wheels is one of the few things that brings together two different worlds within the same community. In the case of Campbell, volunteers leave her a meal but take with them a better appreciation of the Lowcountry's Gullah roots.
ANOTHER WORLD
They may see the colorful quilts and pillow coverings Campbell makes "when I'm sitting down doing nothing."
They may see solemn photographs of her forebears, who made do on an isolated island where a young Laura Mae Williams Campbell would ring the bell at the praise house, light the lamp and open the door for singing and prayer two nights a week.
They may hear how Campbell's father sold strings of fish straight from a bateaux handmade by Solomon Campbell to a steamer passing through Calibogue Sound.
They may hear how Campbell helped build a new Hilton Head as a maid for Sea Pines for 22 years, or how she survived a hurricane when the only weather service islanders knew was written in a little calendar book.
The volunteers can feel the pride in scores of photos of her son, nieces, nephews, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They might see the framed photographs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Or hear the odd story of the painting over the kitchen table of school teacher Frances Jones coming out of a church on Daufuskie Island. Campbell found the painting of her friend in a little store in Maryland when she went to a wedding. "I paid $6 for it," she said.
Meals on Wheels volunteers don't linger. But they do get a glimpse of a Lowcountry they don't see in a gated community.
Sometimes, they see levels of poverty and substandard housing they didn't know existed. Sometimes they see the dignity, joy and creativity of a family matriarch like Campbell.
"Sometimes our new volunteer drivers are shocked," said Greg Vavoso of Bluffton, a board member, driver and treasurer. "People move here and see one side of the Lowcountry. But there are a lot of back roads they don't see."
GOOD WILL
For three decades, Meals on Wheels has been a vehicle for bridging these worlds for the better.
Volunteers say they like Meals on Wheels because it has no meetings. On average, they drive a route several times a month -- all at their own expense. It's run by a volunteer "working board" of 12. It has no office. It has two employees -- part-time contract workers who set up the meals that are prepared at Hilton Head Hospital, which helps with the use of a phone.
Money to feed 80 to 90 clients primarily comes from the United Way of the Lowcountry, the Heritage Classic Foundation, Hargray Caring Coins, Palmetto Electric Trust, Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina, churches, individuals who "adopt a client" through an annual mailing, and the Calhoun Station, Bargain Box and St. Francis thrift shops.
It gets no money from the government.
In northern Beaufort County, volunteers, many from St. Helena's Episcopal Church, help the nonprofit Senior Services of Beaufort County deliver hot meals to about 100 clients each weekday.
Both organizations are always looking for volunteers and donations. Meals on Wheels can be reached at 843-689-8334 (www.mowblufftonhhi.com) and Senior Services of Beaufort County can be reached at 843-524-1787 (www.seniorservicesofbeaufort.org).
It's not like delivering meals to field workers. But it does offer a harvest of good will.
