Sonny Bishop, who could fix anything, was known as Beaufort’s calm voice in a hurricane

The South Carolina Lowcountry has lost its voice of reason with the passing of Sonny Bishop.

That voice was steadiest when hurricanes churned hundreds of miles south of his native St. Helena Island, where he died early Thanksgiving morning at the old family place, Yard Farm.

While so-called weather experts wearing goggles filled our television screens, screaming about our certain doom, Sonny would sit at his computer overlooking Wallace Creek and tell his Facebook friends we would get 4 inches of rain.

Careful observers will note that Oscar Rudolph “Sonny” Bishop Jr., 87, left us just days before another hurricane season comes to an end, this one without a single threat of inconvenience, much less doom.

Sonny would be thankful for that. Maybe, just maybe, we have him to thank for that.

I was thankful for 10 pounds of pecans I bought from him one Thanksgiving week.

Like everything with Sonny, the pecans came with a story. And a science lesson.

That tree in his yard was roughly the same age as America, and when the winds swept over the marsh just right for proper pollination, it could lay down 500 pounds of gargantuan pecans.

REAL LOWCOUNTRY

Story-telling was only one of Sonny’s classic Lowcountry traits.

Like others of his era, he was a person of many professions: truck farmer, educator, entrepreneur and writer.

He could fix anything and build anything. He was asked to build all the pulpit furniture at Sea Island Presbyterian Church. He said all 500 board feet came from a single white oak tree in the Appalachian Mountains. He built his house in 1962, five years after he married Mary, introducing her to St. Helena Island about the time Hurricane Gracie lifted buildings off their foundations.

He studied nature carefully, and especially the tides — a key to understanding what damage a hurricane will do.

He was well educated, with degrees in chemistry and horticulture from Clemson University. He later educated others as a math and science teacher, then assistant headmaster, at Beaufort Academy.

He worked with the O.H. Bishop and Sons truck farming business established by his grandfather on St. Helena. He had a picture of workers sorting green squash in the packing shed, using an electric carousel “made in our shop” as they moved the harvest from the field to a truck bound for Philadelphia or New York. At the time, they had 500 acres planted in green squash and 200 acres in yellow squash.

One of his Facebook friends commented, “Every time you post something, I am not only educated but fascinated.”

Perhaps most importantly, Sonny had a sense of place every bit as thick and sticky as pluff mud. He knew “home.” He shared that certainty of where he came from with his immense file of photographs documenting his family and his community.

And in 2013, he and his daughter, Elizabeth Bishop Later of Georgia, poured all that into a book, “A Place Called Home.” One reader called it “a must-read if you have Beaufort in your soul.”

He told local history, not in a nostalgic haze but with documentation. He had a news clipping on the 1958 dedication of the E. Burton Rodgers Bridge spanning the Broad River. The Charleston News and Courier lead was perhaps a bit of wishful thinking: “Beaufort County is no longer divided in half by a river.”

He lamented that “the replacement bridge is not named for anyone.”

His last venture was a mobile knife-sharpening and lawnmower maintenance company, where he said he could share a lot of useful skills he’d learned over the years.

That came after he tried retirement, concluding that he’d read half the books in the Beaufort Library and the other half weren’t worth reading.

ANGELS IN THE TIDE

That went on right up to the day in July 2018 that Sonny had a massive stroke. He had just gotten in bed, telling Mary they might get a thunderstorm.

When his daughter Elizabeth posted on Facebook about her father’s passing, she commented on these last three years.

“While we missed the quick wit and clever life observations we loved and depended on, we fell in love with the previously quiet and reserved man who suddenly wanted hugs and hand-holding, expressed delight over every re-discovered treat, and relished simple everyday moments such as long naps and golf cart rides down Yard Farm Road.”

She said life in many ways became like a roller coaster, her father’s health added to her stress as a hospital chief nursing officer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What is the purpose of a sunset over Wallace Creek if Sonny isn’t there to take a picture of it?” she wondered.

She was at the place they called home when her father passed.

And she saw more highs than lows.

“It is absolute truth that when the world around us is darkest and coldest, that is when the angels come,” Elizabeth wrote.

“Angels who look like a hospice chaplain who shows up and sings ‘Amazing Grace’ for us. Angels who look like the first grandchild who shows up from Texas, unannounced and just in time, and the cousin from down the road who brings over the perfect pie for a healthy dose of restorative, delicious carbohydrates.

“An angel in the form of a porpoise taking a slow morning swim across the creek, providing a simple and poignant reminder that we are all participants in the ebb and flow of tides that bring life and carry it away.”

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