Folk artist Sam Doyle is the Lowcountry Christmas gift that keeps on giving

Today, unwrapping it all is like discovering Christmas as a child.

It was a day when four shining stars of the South Carolina Lowcountry merged in a moment of great joy in the Bluffton Christmas parade.

Actually, at the time, now some 45 years ago, few realized the gift that was presented to them along the parade route by artists Sam Doyle and Louanne LaRoche and Bluffton icons Babbie Guscio and “Mr. Hugh” O’Quinn.

Louanne dressed in a red gown, portraying the Angel of Bluffton with palm frond wings and a blooming garland. She rode along with her young son, Cash, and rescue dog, Escher, in the bed of Mr. Hugh’s rusty truck that looked like the ghost of a Christmas way, way past.

Christmas-themed paintings by the then-unknown St. Helena Island Gullah folk artist Sam Doyle – the real star of this show -- were wired to the boards around the wooden truck bed.

The instigator was Babbie, who ran the funky parade when Bluffton really was a “state of mind.”

Recollections are that Babbie and Louanne were commiserating at The Store –Babbie’s emporium of doodads on Calhoun Street – when this most unlikely Christmas message took life.

Louanne had a studio in the old Mercantile building, and she was getting into the Bluffton frame of mind after owning and running the Red Piano gallery for a number of years on Hilton Head Island.

She had gone to one of Bluffton’s famous parades before.

“Anybody who wanted to do anything, you could do it,” she said.

Whose idea was the Sam Doyle ‘float?’

Everybody remembers the mayor dressed as a buzzard riding on the town garbage truck. Babbie once rode in an antique convertible with a goat. That would have been prior to the gala “marriage” ceremony of goats Heidi Magnolia and William “Billy” Asterbutt IV at the Harry Cram family property at Foot Point.

Babbie said the Sam Doyle “float” was Louanne’s idea. Babbie chimed in that she knew just who had the right truck. Mr. Hugh, known then mostly for his prodigious vegetable garden and glasses lenses only slightly thinner than Hubble’s Telescope, merrily obliged.

Mr. Hugh could have driven the short route down Highway 46 blindfolded. He moved to Bluffton in 1919 when the boll weevil killed his daddy’s livelihood in Pritchardville and “got a job with Beaufort County, repairing the oyster shell road between Bluffton and Pritchardville.” That’s in Fran Heyward Bollin’s book, “Remembering the Way it Was: Hilton Head, Bluffton and Daufuskie.”

Sam Doyle’s paintings looked right at home in this unusual “exhibit.”

Hidden Gullah story of a secluded island

At the time, most people thought they were looking at junk when they saw his works of paint on roofing tin or wooden panels that filled his yard on St. Helena. He called it his “Outdoor World-Wide-International Gallery.”

But in truth, Thomas Samuel Doyle, who went through the ninth grade at the Penn School and was retired from the laundry at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, was an historian who chronicled in powerful ways the hidden Gullah story of his secluded island.

His paintings of Dr. Buzzard the root doctor and historic Black figures both to St. Helena and the nation were appreciated by a few, including the late John Trask Jr. Louanne and others with connections in the art world took Sam Doyle’s work to heart.

Not long after his paintings of angels and wisemen graced the Bluffton Christmas parade, they were featured in a large exhibition called “Black Folk Art in America, 1930–1980,” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and later toured throughout the United States.

Louanne estimates the six or so paintings in the Bluffton parade would now sell for about $100,000.

A number of Sam Doyle’s paintings are, like those in the Sistine Chapel, inspired by the Bible. He painted the Annunciation and Ascension of Christ, and images from the story of Christ’s birth at Christmas.

Sam Doyle’s work and the culture of St. Helena

Louanne found her relationship with Sam Doyle, which spread to years of involvement at the Penn Center and with the Red Piano Too gallery in Frogmore, to be “really fulfilling.”

“My desire at that point, was to introduce people not only to his work, but the culture of St. Helena.”

And to teach young children that they too are artists.

That’s quite a payload for Mr. Hugh’s old truck in the Bluffton Christmas parade.

Only in the Lowcountry of South Carolina could there be such a moment of peace on Earth.

David Lauderdale can be reached at lauderdalecolumn@gmail.com.

This story was originally published December 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM.