‘Smell it in the mud’: Port Royal character preached environmental responsibility
For years, legendary Beaufort character Bob Bender could barely speak above a whisper.
And then it became a whisper.
He tried a device to amplify his voice as he explained Beaufort County’s watery environment to anyone willing to listen.
“He had something to say,” said his friend, Lolita Huckaby Watson.
Later, Bender depended on words typed into the World Wide Web.
On May 26, he wrote on an environmental message board:
“Dear friends,
“Due to worsening medical conditions over the last three months, I will not be on this dimension much longer. Please know it has been an honor to work with you on behalf of the environment. All the best and be safe, Bob.”
Two days before Bender died Friday in his early 70s at his home in Port Royal, the Town Council went to his bedside prior to its regular meeting and read him their proclamation.
“Whereas, Bob Bender became a Lowcountry Native in 1979, arriving in his hand-painted Nash Rambler ...,” it began.
The proclamation focused on his decades-long struggle to keep alive his dream of an estuarium as an educational and tourism attraction.
“Whereas, Mr. Bender founded his first Estuarium inside his home, called North Street Aquarium which was the first aquarium chartered by the State of South Carolina ...”
A friend wrote long ago in his “Uncle Ron’s Blog” that Bender had come to Beaufort from Columbia, where he was a bartender “at the once famous Forum Lounge,” and an artist.
“He lived in a two-story house in the old historic district of Beaufort,” the blogger wrote in a piece called “Bob Bender’s First Video.”
“He lived on the second floor but the first floor was the most interesting place in Beaufort ... He filled it with fish tanks ... big ones ... and they had to be saltwater tanks ... because the critters who lived in them came from our salt marshes ...”
Lowcountry Estuarium
Bender moved the venture to Port Royal in 2002 as the private, nonprofit Lowcountry Estuarium.
Town Council noted that he opened it to “hundreds of school children and the nearby Sands Beach gave him an open-air classroom to share his knowledge.”
Bender called it a “Window on the Waters.” He would instill environmental stewardship through hands-on education.
Bender “was outspoken for not only for the environment but for the community around him,” the Town Council wrote.
Such passion led to a few dust-ups.
He got in a spat one year about the Beaufort Water Festival official T-shirt and created his own “Unofficial Water Festival T-shirt.” He had a T-shirt shop for a while called The Shop.
But his official contributions seem now as deep as the Port Royal Sound he chronicled so carefully.
From the town:
“Whereas, Mr. Bender’s other accomplishments are: Founding board member of Main Street Beaufort USA, founding member of South Carolina Nature-based Tourism Association, service on the City of Beaufort’s first ATAX committee, responsible for Beaufort Chamber Orchestra receiving its first grant, founding chairman of Old Village Association of Port Royal, originated the idea for Soft Shell Crab Festival and Oktoberfest, served on the Beaufort Regional Chamber as board chairman group tourism subcommittee, founding member of Beaufort Film Commission, founding member of Beaufort International Film Festival Committee, and creator of the artwork for the Ribaut Award, and a member of the Beaufort/Port Royal Sea Level Rise Task Force ; and a member of the (Beaufort County) Rural and Critical Lands board from March 2013 through June 2020 ...”
Glamour’s hippie van
Among hundreds of recent online tributes to Bender, Beaufort International Film Festival founder Ron Tucker told the story of the hippie van.
In 2001, Tucker was “scouting for locations and obtaining props for a Glamour Magazine shoot” in Beaufort. It was for an 8- to 10-page spread on the resurgence of hippie-style clothing. They wanted a VW van, which Tucker couldn’t find. But he saw a 1965 white Chevrolet van on the street and knocked on a nearby door.
The stranger assured him he could paint it to be a hippie van.
Tucker wrote: “Told (Bob Bender) that Glamour was paying, so he was all over it then. Told him he only had four days to do it. They are coming to town on Thursday.”
Bender pored over the task for 71 hours, telling The Beaufort Gazette at the time, “It’s a cubist layout with a hard-edged execution.”
The photo shoot at Clarendon Plantation and the McLeod farm near Seabrook was a success.
“Bob not only delivered a Hippie Van,” Tucker wrote, “but he delivered a Hippie. His hair which was normally pulled back in a pony tail was combed straight down and he was wearing an equally colorful serape. Bob was in heaven.”
Bender said the hippie experience pulled him back into art.
His fish tanks were empty at his passing, the critters returned to the spirits of the marsh. The estuarium, which always struggled for funding, closed in 2011.
But Bender never stopped teaching as the community is now up in arms over development of Bay Point Island.
No service is planned. Bender leaves a host of blog entries and videos about our unusual environment on the estuarium web page.
In a beautiful eulogy on Facebook, Huckaby Watson closed with words Bender typed online last October:
“The marsh is turning. Yesterday green — today yellow — tomorrow brown. Yes, the leaves elsewhere bring beauty but it’s our treasured spartina that brings life. It will break off, float about and decay into particles tiny.
“Say detritus — say it again. Smell it in the mud. It will feed the spawn of spring. It is our maple syrup to be tasted in the oyster. It is the gift of life to our waters and we are responsible for its continuing cycle.
“Lest we forget.”
This story was originally published June 17, 2020 at 2:55 PM.
