‘She had that magic’: Unlikely Hilton Head icon Alicia Hack coached them up till the end

Alicia Hack didn’t fit any mold, but she helped mold Hilton Head Island into a community.

She coached Gators youth football and sold cars at Modern Classic Motors.

She marched in the street to oppose the BASF petrochemical plant proposed for the banks of the pristine Colleton River in Bluffton, and dove headlong into the longer fight to keep Chicago Bridge and Iron from constructing 10-story-high domes for the oil industry on that same Victoria Bluff site.

She ran a business called The Tropical Patio, dealing in cut flowers and plants grown by her husband, the late Orion Hack, an environmentalist who created the arboretum at Port Royal Plantation created by his brother, island development patriarch Fred Hack.

She married a man twice her age when she was 25, only four months after meeting him in the island’s first bank during one of its long 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. work days. She said her tall, deliberative Orion, who became the island’s first Planning Commission chair, looked like JFK.

She reared two children on the island and was an organizer of the Island School Council that raised money to supplement the public schools.

She sang hymns in the First Presbyterian Church choir and barbershop harmony with the Sweet Adelines and a quartet within the main group called The Sand Dollies.

She rode horses and played the flustered mother of the bride in Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite” in the spring of 1973 when the Hilton Head Community Playhouse moved into its first regular season. Her favorite role would be Agnes Gooch in the musical comedy “Mame.”

But Alicia was known best for her zest for life, for saying what she felt, and influencing hundreds of little boys who wore the Gators gold and green when she was their visor-wearing football coach at Barker Field.

The little boys, now big men, ran to their keyboards Tuesday, Feb. 15, when Alicia’s daughter, Molly Hack Liska, posted on Facebook: “While it is with heavy heart that we share the passing of Alicia Hancock Hack, we are blessed in the knowledge that she is at peace with the Lord.”

Tony Quiovers, one of Alicia’s Pee Wee quarterbacks, is now a pastor.

“One of the most influential persons in my life,” he wrote.

Wally Palmer, who grew up to be an artist, said, “She was a pillar for our hometown and always a driving force for us kids.”

Another said, “She made us all feel like we could do anything! And we believed her because she was the proof.”

BASF victory

Alicia Hack was a debutante in Savannah, where her dad was executive vice president of the Great Dane Trailer Co. But she was one of the Bluffton Hancocks.

Her family packed up and moved to Bluffton the minute school was out each year and lived by the river until Labor Day. Alicia couldn’t remember a time that she was not familiar with Hilton Head.

She came to work at the William Hilton Inn the summer after she graduated from high school in 1959, and never wanted to leave.

“It was more fun than anything I can remember,” she told Jim Littlejohn in an “Up Close & Personal” interview for Island Events magazine in 1979.

“Stewart Dunbar had a Jeep and the golf course in Sea Pines was just going under construction. We would make Jeep safaris at night, driving all over what is now Sea Pines.

“Then, at the inn, we would wind up entertaining the guests. There wasn’t any organized night life back then, but I had a guitar and (Sea Pines public relations head) Dave Pearson had an accordion and another girl had a baritone ukulele. We would sit around the pool and play and sing.”

Later, Jerry Reeves of Bluffton told her Elrid Moody needed someone to help in the new Bank of Beaufort branch on Hilton Head. Alicia said the thing that cinched the deal for her was that she could play golf on the bank’s membership.

Soon Corinne VanLandingham wrote in her “Sand Dollars” column in the Packet that Orion Hack sure seemed to be having a lot more banking business to do.

Alicia was an unlikely match for the quieter Hack family. She told me that few people appreciated how smart Fred Hack’s wife, Billie, was because she worked quietly in the background as the island moved into a new age, helping establish such staples as First Presbyterian Church, the Women’s Association and The Bargain Box thrift store.

And Alicia said the Hacks deserve more credit for saving the Colleton River and Port Royal Sound from the degradation that was certain to follow industry.

She illustrated their personal sacrifice by saying the BASF fight of 1969 and 1970 nearly ruined their Hilton Head Co. financially.

But like Gators football, BASF brought the native Gullah community and the newcomers to the island together like nothing else.

Alicia told Jim Littlejohn:

“As worried and as upset as we were at the time, I look back on the BASF fight as the island’s finest hour. The people got together as they never have done since. The fact that we won the fight made it really wonderful — but the cooperation and the feeling of closeness and working toward a common goal was the real victory. If we hadn’t done that, we would never have won.”

Hack Shack Mama

Alicia suffered the pain of losing her husband, and her son, Orion Jr.

She moved to Anderson in the Upstate in the early 2000s. She sold real estate at Lake Hartwell, and more recently was a caregiver for the elderly at NHC Healthcare, feeding them and singing to them.

She returned to her Episcopal roots, joining Grace Episcopal while the rector was on his two-week vacation.

“Father Jack likes to say he came home to find someone new running his church,” said daughter, Molly.

And islanders will not be surprised to hear that late in life, as an avid Clemson football fan, Alicia Hack became something of a celebrity on local sports-talk radio.

She called in once to Walt Deptula’s “Road Rage” show on FM 105.5 The Roar, and he quickly made her a regular.

She became known as “Hack Shack Mama”.

Molly said Hack Shack Mama was up too late watching Clemson win a national football championship, but still called in to roar the next day.

While waiting for her turn on the air, Alicia put the phone on speaker and rested it on her chest.

When “The Walt” burst in to get a blast of Hack Shack Mama’s sass and humor, all the audience heard was snoring.

“She had fallen asleep,” Molly said. “People were coming up to her saying, ‘How was your nap? Sure sounded like a good one.’ ”

Alicia was 80. She was moved from an emergency room to hospice care three days before she died, and she immediately made a room full of nurses laugh.

“She had that magic,” Molly said.

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