Buried in sand: A story uncovered about a hurricane, a man and his bench

The first time he lost the bench was about five years ago, if memory serves, after he got tired of digging out the sand around it, after he lost his dog.

Frank Babel used to sit on the bench with Tyler, his cavalier King Charles spaniel, look at the ocean and have a cocktail.

But Babel didn’t go to the beach as much after Tyler died.

So he let nature take its course with his bench — the sands on the Sea Pines beach on the south end of Hilton Head Island covered it up, buried it in the shifting dunes.

It was known as “The Babel Bench,” but it was the community’s bench — the beach’s bench — installed sometime near the end of 2001 or the start of 2002 — “shortly after 9/11,” he’ll say — about a year after he and wife Linda bought their Oyster Catcher home.

Some contractors working on a nearby house built it for him from scrap wood. They took a case of Budweiser as payment, and on the bench they fastened 8-foot legs to be rooted in the sand.

Babel and his son-in-law walked it down the boardwalk, dug a trench and planted it on the beach.

The bench was sturdy, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

Neighbor Jan Cafasso, from whose house the wood came, remembers the bench being Babel’s idea — a place for reflection, somewhere joggers could rest or tie a shoe, somewhere a person could just be.

The first time he found the bench was a couple of years ago. It was partially exposed, but he had no desire to dig it out.

Besides, he’d already moved the bench once, with the help of his son-in-law. The men had cut off the seat, installed new 8-foot legs and moved the bench about 15 feet closer to the water.

That was sometime around 2005 or 2006, the move prompted by an encroaching dune. And the relocation worked for awhile, though Babel and family would have to excavate the bench every now and then.

“(But) the dunes came as time wore on,” Cafasso said Thursday during a phone interview. “The sands just took it.”

Years later there was one more attempt to dig it out, Linda Babel remembers, but it was not to be.

Tyler died.

Frank Babel spent less time on the beach.

Mother Nature piled on.

“My husband always said a big storm would come along one day,” Linda Babel said, “and we’d see it again.”

A neighbor called Frank Babel on Oct. 11 to tell him his bench had been found.

A couple of days later, Babel left North Carolina, where he’d evacuated ahead of Hurricane Matthew’s arrival, and traveled back to Beaufort County.

He found his home had been largely spared from damage.

And, for the second time, he found his bench, right where he left it.

“I mean, it survived,” he said. “It’s a message, a reincarnation of something. It just shows Mother Nature — it gives and it takes.”

The bench’s nails were rusty Thursday as Babel inspected it. Some of its wood had rotted. But its seat held the man who commissioned it.

Babel might move the bench again.

Or, he might leave it alone.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said.

“The sand will build up again.”

This story was originally published October 27, 2016 at 5:24 PM with the headline "Buried in sand: A story uncovered about a hurricane, a man and his bench."