Lauderdale: Cheers! Jump Griffin says goodbye to Jump & Phil's on Hilton Head

John "Jump" Griffin wishes he had written down all the stories about the Hilton Head Island watering hole he opened 21 years ago.

On Sunday as he reports to work at Jump & Phil's Bar and Grill for the last time, he says he can't remember them.

Griffin is selling to a young couple who will keep the name but write new chapters at the popular place for locals in Reilley's Plaza. Bartender Lawrence Powell and his wife, jewelry maker Lauren Powell, are buying it. They will take over on Tuesday if all goes well.

Griffin lost his co-founder and business partner, Phil Henry, late last year. And at 63, he said the butterflies of working 24/7 to fulfill a dream have slipped away.

Still, the story of Jump & Phil's covers a remarkable era in a remarkable place.

Griffin and Henry came in 1975 out of the University of Georgia when the economy was so bad they couldn't even get interviews for real jobs in the real world.

But Tom Gardner hired them to wait tables at the Plantation Club in Sea Pines. It was in the spring, and one day Griffin is riding down South Sea Pines Drive in his Volkswagen convertible with the top down, and he's smelling the Carolina jasmine and wisteria and the sun is rising over the Atlantic Ocean. He fell in love with the place, and it became his real world.

It was a free-wheeling time when cars backed up on the two-lane U.S. 278 only once a week -- when everyone was turning down Union Cemetery Road to get to Eugene Wiley's Golden Rose Park after midnight on Saturday.

Griffin lived with a group in a Quail Run apartment. When a palmetto tree washed up at Coligny, they saw it as decor. It was loaded into a friend's convertible Oldsmobile 442 and somehow they got the 500-pound behemoth into the apartment. They leaned it against a wall for the time being. It was still there when they left.

This was the era when Miles Altman organized the Toadfish Festival as a spoof on the island's festival mania, and Collins Doughtie produced a T-shirt showing that current events did pierce the island's bubble. "The Ayatollah Shah Do Look Like a Toadfish to Me," it said.

Jump and Phil worked at a number of places, most notably a good decade tending bar at the original Reilley's Bar and Grill that was "Cheers" before there was a "Cheers."

On July 11, 1994 -- with Tom Reilley's blessings and with the financial backing of the late Bob Rice of Hilton Head, the original marketer of Gatorade -- Jump and Phil got their real job.

CELEBRATION OF LIFE

If Griffin could write a book about the place, there would have to be a chapter on Waldo.

As Phil Henry, one of the island's great philosophers, told CH2 magazine, "I always thought that every great bar should have a moose."

It opened with a moose head, later named Waldo, on the wall, and people four deep at the bar.

Later, a papier-machè Waldo by artist Del Holt won a prize in the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

It would include the story of Chuck Larson and Jim Crick wanting to see a Green Bay Packers game one Sunday and the place morphing into Packers headquarters. And how the patrons surprised Griffin by sending him to his first Packers game this season.

There would be the Floyd Burger.

They stayed open to feed the few people who didn't evacuate for Hurricane Floyd. But that turned out to be hundreds of people. They sold burgers and beer to a packed house until it all ran out.

It would include the Hampster Cage, an outside bar opened by Griffin's friend Hamp Greene.

And it would include the celebrations of life held there.

The recent one for Phil Henry attracted 500 people.

And that's where people gathered to reflect on the unusual life of "Cowboy" Bob Coleman, who wrote the best poem ever written about Hilton Head as a requiem to a friend. It included these words:

"I hope you went back to the Rose

for one more rib and golden night

with the moon and live oaks dancing

between the stars and old tail lights ..."

'SIMPLIFY'

Griffin said he didn't get rich at Jump & Phil's.

But he put two kids through college, and his house is paid for.

Not only did he get a real job, he got a real life.

His wife, Susan, owned Susie Q's restaurant for 18 years. She now works at Bistro 17 at night, but is primarily doing daycare for their two grandchildren, Lucas and Emma.

Daughter Tricia teaches eighth-grade language arts at Hilton Head Middle School, and her husband, David Drane, works IT at Hargray. Son Christopher is an Air Force captain.

Griffin said he will take some time off, but he's already working, selling mechanical seals for pumps for Gaddis Inc. of Hilton Head.

He was going to sell the place before his business partner got sick and died at a young age.

"I'm going to simplify," Griffin said.

And he's going to pass the keys to another generation who can feel the adrenaline, live the dream, and write their own book.

Follow columnist and senior editor David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale and facebook.com/david.lauderdale.16.

Related content:

• Popular Hilton Head bar owner Phil Henry dies, Oct. 9, 2015

This story was originally published January 2, 2016 at 10:16 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Cheers! Jump Griffin says goodbye to Jump & Phil's on Hilton Head."