Hilton Head’s can-do generation: How RBC Heritage got to be so rich and famous

Nelle Smith can’t follow the golfers in person this year, but she’ll be watching the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing on television — at Beaufort Memorial Hospital.

Nelle was part of the first tournament, and at 90 and two weeks on the yon side of back surgery, she’ll still be a part of the 54th one, even if it is only to tell a busy nurse, “The course looks so pretty,” or “the island looks so good.”

That’s a glimpse at the spunk that got us here.

Today’s global audience watching that stunning scenery that Hilton Head Islanders almost take for granted cannot possibly imagine that it rides on the sore back of Nelle and her can-do generation.

Nelle moved to Hilton Head in 1963 with children ages 6, 4 and 2 when her husband, John Gettys Smith, took a job to promote the Sea Pines dream of founder Charles Fraser.

John was assistant general chairman under Fraser for the first five PGA Tour events on the island, known then as the Heritage Golf Classic played around Thanksgiving.

The iconic finishing hole is about where her children used to gather oysters and the family harvested Christmas trees.

Nell’s Harbour Shop was the first shop in Harbour Town, a gift shop she operated from 1971 to 1996, even though she told John when he leased the prime location that she wanted it in writing that she would have nothing at all to do with the shop.

She soldiered on then, with spunk and charm, just as she did through months of shooting pain from her back to her toes, and through surgery and now rehabilitation.

“I am so proud of the way she has handled the surgery and the last four or five months,” said her daughter, Ora Smith, who she lives with in Beaufort. “She is on a good path and has come a long way since her surgery on March 31st.”

Nelle should be going home on Tuesday.

HARBOUR TOWN

Nelle’s path in life was worrisome to her parents in Winnsboro and John’s parents in York when they moved to Hilton Head.

It didn’t help when one of her children told his grandmother he spent his time waiting for the elementary school bus by throwing rocks at alligators.

Ora says it’s impossible for the throngs at today’s Heritage to imagine the world islanders of the 1960s lived in — and invited the world to come see at Harbour Town Golf Links.

It was an island of dirt roads, wild hogs, no hospital, no town hall.

“Looking back, I can understand our parents being worried to death, but we were so young, so poor and so excited about the opportunity to be part something so unique that we were not afraid at all,” Nelle writes in a book she and Ora co-authored in 2018, “Paradise: Memories of Hilton Head in the Early Days.”

The Smiths, like others on the island, didn’t feel they were special or extra smart to start so many island institutions, “but we were so fortunate to have this opportunity, and we took it.

“We wanted the best for our children, and if we lacked something we felt we needed, we just started it! There were no rules of previous ways of doing things. … You had to make it your own. This gave us the courage and freedom to jump in with both feet together.”

SEA PINES

The Heritage lives on as a thriving Exhibit A of that generation.

Nelle’s husband designed the tournament’s plaid.

“Golfers brought their families, and John asked many of the Sea Pines families to host them,” she writes.“Golfers didn’t have any money to spend on lodging, and the residents loved having a pro and his family stay with them.”

Writers were enticed to bring their families and come enjoy comped rooms.

“All of them were invited to shrimp boils, a cocktail buffet party at our house, and they especially loved the oyster roast at Donald O’Quinn’s house and garden.

“All islanders, not just Sea Pines residents, were involved and volunteered to help the tournament.

“School was let out. All the older kids carried banners, washed golf balls, and did anything else needed.”

She recalls the most joyous moment of that first Heritage being the moment Arnold Palmer’s final putt rolled in the cup on a lonely 18th green, and his win became a public relations coup no money could have bought.

Not that Sea Pines had any money.

“Islanders were blessed with an optimistic spirit in those early years,” as Nelle tells it, “and a ‘can-do-anything-togetherness’ that accomplished so much.”

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

This story was originally published April 16, 2022 at 12:57 PM.