Hilton Head arts icon Margaret Greer dies

Margaret Greer, an arts and cultural leader on Hilton Head Island since 1960, died peacefully at home Friday night, friends said.

Her death at 92 follows by four months the passing of her husband, Walter Greer, considered the island’s first resident artist.

She set a stylish tone for a growing community, a visible figure in the arts, social life and historical appreciation.

She wrote or edited a number of books about the island, including “The Sands of Time: A History of Hilton Head Island,” “Three Decades of Hilton Head Island Architecture: 1965-1995,” and “Short & Tall Tales of Hilton Head Island.”

Greer was at one time owner, publisher and editor of Islander magazine. She also wrote articles for many publications, including a long-running weekly social column in The Island Packet.

Her essay in the 2016 book by Charlie Ryan, “My Life With Charles Fraser,” is a synopsis of how the arts developed on Hilton Head — visual, dance, theater, symphony — as well as the organizations created to support them and herd them.

She credits Sea Pines founder Fraser with creating a community that attracts artists and art lovers.

“They fill our boards, buy our paintings, attend our plays, donate to our charities, making Hilton Head Island an arts, cultural, and historical destination, so active our town government can barely keep up,” she said in Ryan’s book.

What she didn’t say is that she was a key figure in making it that way.

And at her husband’s memorial service in October, she quietly wondered aloud to friends who would keep their generation’s momentum going.

Packet arts columnist Nancy Wellard wrote last year that Margaret Greer helped shape Hilton Head.

Wellard described her as “powerful, polished, intelligent, strong, energetic, fun, a visionary, a gifted writer and through it all, incredibly stylish.”

Greer first came to Hilton Head in 1959. By the next year, she and her then-husband, Larry Orr, and their two small children were living in a home built on a $7,000 oceanfront lot on Sandhill Crane.

After a divorce, Fraser gave Margaret Greer a job as Plantation Club membership secretary. She was immediately immersed in organizing social events to benefit fledgling community nonprofits. And later, she and Walter Greer, became synonymous with the cultural development that came along with community development.

“Charles (Fraser) and Margaret shared a lot of the same ideas, philosophies, really,” early Sea Pines executive Jim Chaffin told Wellard. “They both felt strongly about the uniqueness of people, their concepts about where they chose to live, and especially their ideas.”

Margaret Greer reflects the drive and curiosity of those who set up today’s community. They created a lot of stuff by the seat of their pants, but always with dashes of frivolity and a sense of pride.

She captured that era in an essay she called “Rattle Weeds” in her “Short & Tall Tales” coffee-table book, illustrated by photographer Barry Lowes and Walter Greer sketches and paintings. She tells of a wilderness now filled with homes. And I think she gets to the core of her generation’s spirit, and what it will take for it to survive.

“... Our destination is Dolphin Head; so it is back to the sandy, rutted road and a search for the right cluster of rattle weeds. More often than not, the low-slung cars of the time became stuck in sand or mud before finding the right, or rather left, turn.

“Here is where another wild bush or small tree came in handy. Using a machete, we chopped away a few fragrant myrtle branches; stuffed the branches under the rear wheels of the car; gunned the engine; and prayed. No other vehicle would come along to help, of that we were certain.

“Bumping back on the right trail to Dolphin Head, we knew we were near as openings appeared in the tall grasses and bushes. The real Dolphin Head entrance was at an enormous Toothache Tree. Down through the ages this tree’s knobby bark has been used to anesthetize the jaw of someone suffering from toothache. Not as good as Novocaine but better than nothing.

“Standing on the high bluffs you can see the sweeping view across Port Royal Sound to Parris Island to the left and Bay Point to the right. These are the bluffs sighted by Captain William Hilton from his ship, the Adventure, when he named Hilton’s Head. These are the bluffs where Indians camped. This is the site where the Elliott family built their island home on their Myrtle Bank Plantation. Their main house was in Beaufort.

“The sound of history demands you tune in and explore.”

This story was originally published February 4, 2017 at 11:40 AM with the headline "Hilton Head arts icon Margaret Greer dies."