Daufuskie buddies will sign books about the island Aug. 5 at Freeport Marina

Roger Pinckney XI first came to Daufuskie Island more than 60 years ago, tagging along with his daddy, Captain Roger Pinckney X, dockbuilder and long-time Beaufort County coroner. He came back in 1962, then in 1970 and then lit out for a 20-year sojourn on a northern Minnesota farm.

Meanwhile, in 1966, Wick Scurry tagged behind his own daddy, Dr. Jack Scurry, a native of Greenwood, a Hilton Head Island property owner and member of the South Carolina Coastal Council, the predecessor to today’s regulatory Office of Coastal Resource Management.

Dr. Jack, as he was affectionately known, bought land on the Cooper River for a family retreat, which eventually became Freeport Marina.

Pinckney and Scurry met when Pinckney returned to the island in 1998 and the men struck up an abiding friendship. As Scurry was a great story-teller, Pinckney, by then a widely-published author, encouraged him to write a memoir of his time on Daufuskie, which Scurry did in 2015 with “Wick and Jake’s Daufuskie Island,” focusing on his friendship with Gullah patriarch Jake Washington, the unofficial “Mayor of Daufuskie” and a colorful character in his own right.

When Scurry purchased the Bloody Point Lighthouse in 2016 and turned it into a museum, gift shop and interpretive center for Daufuskie history, Pinckney proposed a similar book about the astounding history of Bloody Point. Scurry agreed and Pinckney’s “Blood and Thunder at Bloody Point” was the result.

Pinckney and Scurry will host a joint book signing at Freeport Marina from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 5. For more information: 843-342-8687.

This story was originally published July 27, 2017 at 11:21 AM with the headline "Daufuskie buddies will sign books about the island Aug. 5 at Freeport Marina."