History shows why the new Port Royal Sound Maritime Center is important
Fred C. Hack came across as an easygoing man.
And compared to his counterpart, the energetic, younger Charles E. Fraser, he was.
Yet of these two primary developers of modern Hilton Head Island, Hack was the first with boots on the ground. He moved a young family to the island in 1950 as the timbering of the Hack and Fraser families quickly morphed into land development.
When Hack moved to Honey Horn Plantation, the island had no bridge, electricity, phone service or doctor. His children went to a one-room schoolhouse.
For the next quarter century, Hack poured everything he had into Hilton Head, from hopes and dreams to nickels and dimes.
He loved the nature he found here.
I'm told about the day a contractor found a two-headed palmetto tree that was about to be bulldozed to make way for a house. He knew what to do. He called Hack, who knew the tree well. He transplanted it.
I've been told where I can find meteorites that were among the odd treasures Hack and his chief surveyor discovered as they walked the island.
"Fred regarded the whole of Hilton Head as his demesne," it was said when he died in 1978 at the young age of 63.
We had just finished cutting and pasting -- with our hands, not computers -- another edition of The Island Packet when the call came in that this pillar of the community had died. It's still the only time I've heard an editor say, "Rip up the front page."
It was said at the time, and was repeated when Hack and Charles Fraser joined Charlie Simmons Sr. and Charlotte Henrichs in the inaugural class of the Hilton Head Island Hall of Fame: "When Hilton Head Islanders talked about Fred Hack, they always had a dilemma; they couldn't decide whether to call him a land developer or a philanthropist, an environmentalist or a churchman, a gold bullion expert or an amateur archaeologist, a farmer or a corporate executive."
I was thinking about Hack as the Port Royal Sound Foundation opened the doors Saturday to its Maritime Center at the old Lemon Island Marina on S.C. 170. It's a place where people can learn about this rare estuary, and how to keep it clean.
They should learn about Hack. He and his brother Orion were leading figures in the successful fight to keep a petrochemical plant from being built on the Colleton River in 1969.
It is all but forgotten in time, but shortly before Hack died, he wrote three op-eds for the newspaper about Port Royal Sound.
In them, Hack did not come across as an easygoing man.
"The treachery that has to be dealt with to protect Port Royal Sound is the type fair-minded people don't expect," begins an essay on how the local, state and federal governments seemed hell-bent on polluting the sound.
His target was Chicago Bridge and Iron, which eyed a site on Victoria Bluff to build 10-story-high spheres for shipping liquefied natural gas.
Hack was concerned that the race to protect the natural resources of Beaufort County never had a finish line.
"Our overwhelming success (against BASF) in exposing and publicizing the acts of our civil servants nationwide should have made the estuaries secure for posterity," he wrote.
Hack went into detail about who was doing what to endanger the sound and the aquifer, and he pleaded for public action.
"Port Royal Estuary cannot be restored after the crime is committed," Hack wrote.
Fred Hack went to his grave trying to educate the public about the value of a clean Port Royal Sound.
With the fights of his generation, the die was cast. The heavy industry around the sound became you and me, and our houses, yards, dogs, docks, marinas, boats, cars, streets, stores and parking lots.
As Hack said in 1978, the people surrounding Port Royal Sound need to get educated. We must pay attention. And, by all means, stay busy.
That's why the new Maritime Center is important.
Follow columnist David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale.
This story was originally published November 1, 2014 at 5:26 PM with the headline "History shows why the new Port Royal Sound Maritime Center is important."