He died tragically, but this Bluffton man lives on in Old Town shops — and a swing

It was crafted from scraps and “heavy as heck,” Shellie West remembers, and it was just what she wanted — what she’d asked her dad to make.

She came home to find it sitting on her Bluffton porch one day last spring, and she didn’t know how he — William Randolph West, “Randy,” to family and friends — had managed to deliver it by himself.

“Maybe he put it on the back of his golf cart,” she said Tuesday, chuckling.

It was a swing he’d crafted from old wood pallets, sanded smooth and whitewashed.

A product of his recent “piddlin’,” as his daughter called it — Randy, always looking for something to do, had started building pallet furniture.

And weeks later in July, when Shellie lost her house to a fire, it would be damaged, but would survive.

Now, the swing is a reminder of her father, his craftsmanship, his personality. Randy died after what Shellie called a “freak accident,” an explosion Nov. 18 in Bluffton that sent him to the burn clinic at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, Ga.

He was 71.

A long-time Bluffton contractor whose work dots the town, Randy passed away “surrounded by family and friends,” according to his obituary. His life offers a glimpse at what’s brought people to the Lowcountry over the years, how the place has changed and how it’s endured.

And the stories people tell about Randy are the kind we hope are told about us one day — how loved ones see our legacies reflected in the people we’ve known, the places we’ve been, the work we’ve done.

The West family came from Augusta, said Shellie, CEO of the Greater Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, which is located in a building Randy constructed.

In the early 1970s, Randy helped family friends build a summer home in Bluffton. A few years later, he and his brother started making trips to Hilton Head Island, during a construction boom.

He began building his own house on Myrtle Island Road in Bluffton in the early 1980s.

“That’s where I grew up,” Shellie said, adding that it was “a group effort building that house” — she recalls helping hang drywall.

They lived in the house while they were building it, and stuffed newspaper between the cracks in the plywood floor to keep out the cold.

He later spent seven years building a custom catamaran, 40 feet in length, that caught the eyes of boaters traveling the May River.

He was a fisherman.

He tinkered, fixed up boats and golf carts.

He had a 1990 Chevy Blazer, black and gold, that he might have loved as much as his family, a friend joked recently at a celebration of his life, according to Shellie. The truck had about a million miles on it, she said, and he had to change out the seats on occasion and repaint it five or so times.

“He was the kind of man who, you know, he didn’t give up on stuff,” Shellie said. “He was kind of thrifty and loved to salvage stuff. Everything could be recycled and reused, everything could be fixed.”

He gave a teenaged Jacob Patterson Jr. his first summer job, 31 years ago.

“He was my mentor on the construction side, but (also) just like another dad,” Patterson said, explaining his father and Randy were good friends.

“You have different mentors in different parts of your life,” Patterson said, “but ... I can use the things that he taught me not just in the business world, but in my personal life.”

Patterson said Randy’s death left a hole in the community, and that he wished he could have soaked up more of the man’s building expertise.

Bluffton architect Chris Epps sees Randy’s legacy in Patterson and others, and in buildings around town.

Randy worked on the Olde Towne Golf Cars building and did some of the finishing work at Corner Perk.

He was in the process of rallying subcontractors to donate their time to build a pavilion in Oscar Frazier Park; Epps and Patterson want to continue the effort and hope to name the project in honor of their friend.

Randy was a contractor who had a reputation of working well with others, Epps said, a man respected by town and county officials who knew everything there was to know about building codes.

“The greatest man I ever knew,” Shellie’s sister, Leigh West Brown, wrote on her Facebook page, above a photo of her dad. “He was my hero.”

After the July fire claimed her home, Shellie said her dad bought a house near his. She thought he’d planned to renovate it and rent it out, but he soon offered to fix it up for her, her husband and their kids.

He and Shellie also looked at plans for a new home, but the accident claimed his life before he could build it.

In the wake of her house fire, Shellie’s husband pulled the charred pallet swing off the porch before the structure was bulldozed.

She was glad he did.

It was well-built.

Salvageable.

“And now I’ll have that for my new home,” Shellie said.

“I’ll have that porch swing.”