Lessons in patience and faith: A father’s influence on how Hilton Head turned out

Father’s Day is a perfect time for you to meet Joseph Bacon Fraser Sr., the greatest influencer of modern Hilton Head Island you’ve never heard of.

The story of his remarkable life is sketched in Wikipedia, though few on Hilton Head today would know any of it: Citizen soldier who earned a chest full of medals and the rank of lieutenant general fighting in both world wars and Korea. A business success and civic leader. A local and national church leader. A Boy Scout hero.

In World War I, he fought in France under a young captain named Harry S. Truman. As president, Truman would write:

“I regard General Fraser as a professional in the best sense of the word, a dedicated, devoted patriot who committed his life to the defense of his country. He knew well the role of the military as well as the supremacy of civilian authority. He combined discipline with compassion. He was a great soldier and a wonderful friend.”

In World War II, Fraser prayed aboard an overcrowded ship zig-zagging to avoid explosives as it steamed toward what Gen. Douglas MacArthur had predicted was a lost cause in New Guinea.

“This is it,” one of the men who called him “Holy Joe” would write in his diary. “The Japanese are moving in toward New Guinea ... Into combat. We’ve been preparing but didn’t really believe it would happen. … We can’t believe that we’re playing for keeps.

“Col. Joe Fraser and I met and prayed to God last night for guidance and leadership to carry our men through the battles before them. He was crying; his men were going to die. All are willing to go, but what a sinking feeling.”

A few years later on peaceful Hilton Head, where the big fuss was between mockingbirds and osprey, something much different set Fraser apart.

His influence was not that of a visionary or even an investor.

His influence in how Hilton Head looks today was made as a father.

FATHER’S DAY

The general and “Miss Pearl” — Pearl Collins Fraser — reared two sons in the small town of Hinesville, Georgia, about 40 miles from Savannah.

But the world of Joseph B. “Joe” Fraser Jr. and his younger brother Charles Elbert Fraser always stretched beyond the borders of Liberty County through education, the arts, gardening, religion and a strong sense of civic duty.

It had been that way since the Frasers came from Scotland.

Young Charlie and Joe knew that their father was mayor, like his father before him. They knew their great-grandfather was a clerk of court and state legislator.

They were influenced by their father’s siblings, including a minister, a college Bible professor who wrote a book called “The Life and Philosophy of Christ,” and teachers like their mother.

They saw their father singing in the choir at the Presbyterian church in town, built on land given by their father. They saw him earn the highest honors in Boy Scouts as a regional and national leader.

They knew he was a longtime board member of Presbyterian College in South Carolina, and tough enough to play football for the University of Georgia Bulldogs, though he never lettered.

Joe was also an athlete, even though he had to overcome polio.

Charlie would sit under a tree reading books, studying maps of the world rather than which end of a baseball bat to hold.

But more than all that, the boys learned that their father trusted them.

And that his love was unconditional.

SEA PINES

When Fraser left home for World War II, he turned the family’s Fraser Lumber Company and Fraser Supply businesses over to Joe. He was all of 17.

A bigger gamble came later, when Charles, a 26-year-old with zero experience in real estate or development, was given the keys to his family’s nest egg, with free rein to develop the south end of Hilton Head into an upscale residential community and resort called Sea Pines.

Thus the die was cast for Hilton Head.

Charles was a precocious handful, brimming with ideas and self-confidence.

Surely the general must have thought the boy was squandering his recent degree from Yale Law School.

The move is not about development, but a father’s patience and faith in a son.

It was much more patience than his fellow timbermen and investors had in the young upstart after they acquired 20,000 acres of Hilton Head Island around 1950.

The general was 51% stockholder in the purchase of the first 8,000 acres, at $60 a pop, and president of the Hilton Head Company that was formed to timber it.

Joe came over to run the timbering operation, and later devoted his life to making Sea Pines work.

But just as all this started, the citizen-soldier got called again to duty, this time in Korea. The early development of the island was led by investors Fred C. Hack, a Hinesville neighbor who moved his family to Hilton Head in 1949, and the Olin T. McIntosh family of Savannah.

Charles arrived having done careful study, but telling men much older than he was — who had been here fighting in the trenches — that they weren’t doing it right.

In the resulting clash, the Frasers traded their interest in the company for several thousand acres that would become Sea Pines.

The quiet and respected general sided with his son, and that made all the difference.

HILTON HEAD

What was he thinking?

Gen. Fraser was the board chairman, but he never lived on the island. He tended to drive a big Buick up on Sunday afternoon to check on the work of his sons. Later he and Miss Pearl would have a condominium in Sea Pines, though he questioned the idea that people would pay $30,000 for an apartment.

Pearl Fraser helped with the landscaping of Sea Pines and its William Hilton Inn, bringing plants from her 3-acre garden in Hinesville, including hybrid daylilies she produced.

Both the general and Miss Pearl died in 1971.

In a 1967 story in Islander Magazine, Gen. Fraser said, “The development of Hilton Head Island has exceeded my most extravagant dreams. It is like Virgil’s ‘fortunate isle’ and those who live on it are indeed blest.”

He also said, “Someday, perhaps there will be a small college here. Thus in a setting of unequalled natural beauty the island will make a contribution to the advancement of culture and to values which are worthwhile and uplifting for young and old alike.”

But there is a better insight into what the mind of the patient father who had been subjected to Nazi Germany immediately after the war.

It came to me via Facebook in a post by one of the general’s seven grandchildren, renowned artist West Fraser.

It’s a poem sent to West from his aunt and uncle, Charles and Mary Wyman Stone Fraser, at Christmas 1971.

“This was one of your grandfather’s favorite poems that we thought you would like to preserve,” they said.

It’s by Josiah Gilbert Holland.

God Give Us Men

God, give us men! A time like this demands

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;

Men whom the lust of office does not kill;

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;

Men who possess opinions and a will;

Men who have honor; men who will not lie;

Men who can stand before a demagogue

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!

Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog

In public duty, and in private thinking;

For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,

Their large professions and their little deeds,

Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,

Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.