‘Thank you all for inviting me in’: Packet columnist calls it a career | Opinion
Thomas C. Barnwell Jr. had an important document I needed when I tapped on his door.
Those of you who know this historic figure in Hilton Head Island’s story will appreciate this.
When he answered, I said ever so politely, “I can’t come in ...”
And Tom said in his kind of half-laugh, half-cry: “Ain’t nobody asked you to come in!”
That’s how I feel today as I write this last column for you.
Ain’t nobody asked me to come into your homes, but, like Tom Barnwell, you’ve welcomed me warmly.
I appreciate that, and the first thing I want to say is thank you.
And forgive me — all of you in the public and on The Island Packet staff who have not been treated fairly or paid enough attention to or even responded to over the years.
But isn’t it appropriate that I slink off into retirement, leaving you in the Cone of Uncertainty?
Hurricanes like the one in the cone now are like the spring’s first painted buntings we used to feature on the front page. They don’t seem to have a season anymore. They’re here year-round.
It’s appropriate because the Vortex of Uncertainty has swirled between my ears since we started meeting like this in the fall of 1977.
And you all have been part of it, egging me on with nonsense.
When I was cleaning out my office, this surfaced:
“We experienced something today, what was unusual for us, after having lived here for 10 years,” one of you wrote.
“This bird came back onto my wife’s head, for several hours, trying to pull out her hair.”
And this hot tip, with the name redacted to protect the innocent:
“I got a call from an anonymous source who said that Port Royal resident ... has an upside-down Christmas tree in her house that is really nifty.”
If I recall correctly, I got beat on that story by “60 Minutes.”
Lowcountry love
I’d always dreamed that the day I retired, I’d wave to the staff, shake the editor’s hand, meet my wife, Sybil, in the lobby and drive straight to the Savannah airport, dashing off to New York for shows, or Chicago for blues and pizza.
But being homebound by a pandemic is also fitting, really, for someone who has drunk so deeply from the cup of Lowcountry life.
The Lowcountry welcomed us warmly the summer after we graduated from Erskine College and got married, 45 years ago.
South Carolina’s Lowcountry seeps into your blood like a spring tide.
For us, it started when we were both offered jobs teaching at Thomas Heyward Academy in Ridgeland. That way we could get married and move to a place we knew nothing about.
Sydney “Nookie” Brown arranged for a home we could rent in Grahamville from Charlie and Rebecca Malphrus for $90 a month, and the adventure began.
So did life’s lessons.
Mrs. Brown didn’t have to do that, but she did it, simply because she was kind. She looked out for someone other than herself.
We landed as alleged adults in a subtropical place where everyone eats rice and talks funny, eh?
After a few weeks, I said to Sybil:
“Bo! Did you sign us up for a foreign exchange program?”
Then I met Delmar Rivers.
Instant gratification
Delmar said sure, when I asked about printing a student newspaper for the high school.
The previous year, I’d written a number of pieces for The Erskine Mirror, which both my parents edited in their day.
I think seeing the byline became an addiction — or an affliction.
I learned like Pavlov’s dog that a byline helps you feel you are contributing to a community at a much higher level than most people can. And it comes with a rush of instant gratification.
Maybe that high school student newspaper staff could catch that same, somewhat healthy buzz, I thought. The student editor was Ellen Malphrus, who went on to earn a Ph.D studying under James Dickey, and is now a novelist, poet and professor at USCB.
.jpg "David in composing (1).jpg")
So when I met Delmar, he asked if I could do a write-up. Tell what Furman University football coach Art Baker says at the sports banquet.
I don’t recall what the coach said. But those became the first, carefully hunted-and-pecked words of a highly paid professional.
Do not try this at home.
Jasper County News
Delmar asked me come in on Tuesday afternoons to help paste up the Jasper County News, and to write more stories.
One painful memory is a headline about Ridgeland wooing a new doctor. His last name was Woo. Ouch.
But I liked the story about Capt. Bruce hijacking his own shrimp trawler after Georgia wildlife officers boarded it, claiming he was shrimping illegally across the watery state line at the Savannah River. Capt. Bruce turned the boat back to Hilton Head, and, if I recall correctly, deck hose spray-downs were involved.
Next, in my second summer out of college, Delmar hired me to run the whole show, selling ads and everything. It sure beat the previous summer job of loading hay for D.P. Lowther.
I begged The Beaufort Gazette for a job, but it was an afternoon daily at the time and editor Pete Pillow needed people with more experience.
But Packet publisher Ben Banks hired me.
The twice-weekly, tabloid-sized Packet was more my speed.
We grew along with this remarkable community. The Packet just marked its 50th anniversary, and if you wanted to look back on all that has involved, you’d see why I’m worn out.
I’m proud of what we’ve done. The Packet has been a raging success by any measure.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Walt Disney World
This community has treated me and my family with more love and respect than I deserved.
On another day, I tapped at the door of beautiful Val Curry.
She’s the genteel woman who gave us the Hilton Head International Piano Competition. Her husband, John Curry, was a business leader and Hilton Head champion who brought to our community the style and expertise of the man who was hired by Walt Disney in 1966 to create from scratch the Contemporary and Polynesian resorts at Walt Disney World.
Think about that: He worked for both Walt Disney and Charles Fraser.
On this day, Val said she was cleaning out her garage and had some stuff she thought might help me. I did indeed come back to the office with treasures — Lowcountry books, complete with related news clippings she’d placed in them.
I would learn later that Val was not really cleaning out her garage. She was ill, and knew she would soon be joining John in the Six Oaks Cemetery in Sea Pines.
Etched into the granite bench at their grave are these words chosen by John Curry: “Don’t wait on your ship to come in. Swim out to meet it.”
What a fortunate soul I am to have found my ship in life, the little smoke-belching Packet boat.
Thank you all for inviting me in.
