“Anything I can do for her I would do”: HH restaurant seeks funds to help cook retire
As a teenager working at Charlie’s L’Etoile Verte, a French restaurant on Hilton Head Island, Rachel Cram could never figure out how to make delicate birds out of fruit.
This despite veteran lunch cook Doretha “Essie” Jenkins patiently showing her how to do it multiple times during Cram’s tenure there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“She just never missed a beat in the kitchen,” said Cram, now a real estate agent in Bluffton.
When Cram needed Jenkins most, she said, she was there — like the time she cut her finger doing prep work in the kitchen.
“She grabbed the first aid kit and put me right back together,” Cram said. “That’s just the way she is — just so kind. And a great laugh to go with it.”
Jenkins, who made the hour-long commute from Ridgeland to Hilton Head each day, was there when Cram fell in love, got married and had kids, she said — a member of the sprawling “family” of people who work or have worked at the restaurant.
Charlie Golson founded the bistro in 1982 after leaving his post as executive chef of the Hilton Head Inn and buying a French restaurant named Le Bon Vivant.
Jenkins, who had been a cook at the inn, accompanied him.
The restaurant is now owned by Golson’s daughter, Margaret Pearman. And while much changed there and on the Island, Jenkins’ presence remained a constant.
Jenkins came back to work in June after staying at home for two months as a precaution. The restaurant had reopened in April in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
But soon after she masked up and returned, she went almost completely blind due to diabetes, rendering her unable to work.
The restaurant, Pearman said, wants Jenkins to retire formally, but has hit roadblocks.
The main breadwinner for her family, Jenkins pays for her mortgage with her paycheck, Pearman said.
She still owes $75,000 on that mortgage, and at the current interest rate, will be unable to pay that in her lifetime. She does not have access to credit because she’s never had a bank account.
Pearman’s goal is to help Jenkins and her family refinance their home. Her husband and son live with her but are disabled and do not work.
In 2005, Jenkins refinanced her home with a lender who, Pearman said, is “waiting for her to die.”
So Pearman is asking the community to chip in to a GoFundMe campaign designed to help with Jenkins’ mortgage payments as she explores options. She wants to make sure Jenkins can stay in the home she built for her family 45 years ago, on land given by her aunt.
“If they refinance or whatever they can do and break the mortgage payment, I’ll accept that,” Jenkins said.
The first step, Pearman said, is getting the home reappraised. She said it was last appraised for more than it was worth, which made the mortgage payment higher. And she wants to help Jenkins’ daughter establish credit so she can co-sign the refinanced amount.
“I want to retire her the right way so that she is taken care of for the rest of her entire life and that she can spend a little bit of it at home,” she said. “I do not want her to have to worry that the house will be taken away from her family.”
The campaign has received a good deal of support.
As of Aug. 3, it had received $14,535 in donations. Pearman said she has also received donations off-line, including a check for $5,000 that came in the mail. The restaurant is also donating half of all sales of Cobb salad and tomato salad dressing to Jenkins, who pioneered the recipes.
One of the donors, Hilton Head Island real estate agent Charlie Schroeder, met Jenkins in the 1990’s as a college student, when he started working the lunch shifts. He worked there from 1991 to 2011.
“Can you imagine going through that and then also the COVID-19 thing?” Schroeder asked. “I feel for her, and anything I can do for her, I would do.”
Jenkins has recently had surgery on her eyes and said her vision has improved somewhat.
“I couldn’t see anything before I had the surgery. Everything was dark and blurry,” she said. “I am doing my best.”
But Pearman said the restaurant is not a safe environment for her, due to COVID-19. Diabetes is a risk factor for severe cases of the virus.
“She hasn’t ever really willingly wanted to retire because she felt like it really kept her going,” Pearman said.
Jenkins agreed. But she knows her time has come.
“I wasn’t ready,” she said. “But now I think I’m ready.”
