Hilton Head remembers Chris Wimmer, ‘an island original to the core’
On Saturday, flags at Harbour Town flew at half-staff for a man many longtime Hilton Head Island residents and passers-by remembered.
If you spent time on the island in the 1970s or 1980s, chances are you crossed paths with Chris Wimmer, the tall, beautiful and somewhat weathered harbormaster who helped guide thousands of boats through one of the island’s busiest marinas and helped shape its culture.
“He just had an air about him that you couldn’t forget. Always courteous, always kind and with a sense of humor that rocked, Chris was the best of the best when it came to early islanders,” Collins Doughtie, a longtime friend of Wimmer’s and a 60-year Lowcountry resident, told the Island Packet.
Wimmer lost a hard-fought battle to cancer on Thursday in Memphis, Tennessee, where he and his wife, Stacy, lived for the past 15 years. Decades later, the memory of the harbormaster and one of the island’s fathers still lingers across the marina he once oversaw.
In his 20s, Wimmer oversaw Harbour Town’s marina, simultaneously serving as a filling station attendant, hotel clerk, security guard and genial host, according to a profile from 1976.
“The value of the boats is not in the money to the people who own them,” Wimmer told an Island Packet reporter 40 years ago. “It is the boat itself. That is why all of the boats have names, usually female. It is like a love affair.”
He discovered Hilton Head just five years earlier in the spring of 1971, when he and Stacy visited the island from their home in Memphis. At home, Wimmer was well-known for his role in organizing the Memphis Country Blues Festival in the 1960s.
But after their visit, Hilton Head became their home for nearly four decades. Wimmer first worked as a dock attendant at the Harbour Town marina before becoming harbormaster.
Byron Sewell grew up just a few houses down from the Wimmers on Heron Street in North Forest Beach. They were the “magical” days of running barefoot down the then-signless, dirt roads, climbing big trees and sitting on each other's shoulders at the beach as waves crashed into them.
He remembered the adults around him as strikingly beautiful, long-haired and sun-kissed, with spirits that were vibrant and eccentric. Wimmer was no exception. He was raising his son, Tayloe, but was also “one of the island’s fathers,” Sewell said.
“It was a time when all the kids on the island were raised by these really special people,” said Sewell, “and he [Wimmer] was one of them.” Sewell added that Wimmer had a gift of making young people feel seen and special.
Wimmer helped organize the earliest marlin fishing tournaments from the marina, Doughtie said. After leaving Harbour Town, Wimmer gave fishing a try for the next five years before becoming harbor master at Palmetto Bay. He was more of a weekend fisherman than a “hardcore angler,” Doughtie wrote.
“If you thought he was there [at the marina] every single day, you were probably right,” said Doughtie. He and Stacy lived on a houseboat called the Mambo at the marina. Those who frequented the marina at the time might have also recognized his fishing boat, Taboo.
The Wimmers lived on the island until 2011, when they returned to their home state. Their family is in the process of planning a celebration of Wimmer’s life at some point in October, Doughtie said.
“Chris Wimmer was, and is, an island original to the core,” wrote Doughtie. “He was indeed the best of the best.”
