By Scott Graber
It’s Tuesday, early, cool and wet in Port Royal. This will be a “bonus day” — a day when we won’t get the debilitating, innervating heat that is customary on June 2.
This morning I have a copy of “Windows on Washington Square, a Memoire by Joe Riley.”
Joe Riley was Charleston’s Mayor for 40 years serving from 1975 to 2016. During his tenure he took a small, water-logged, largely overlooked South Carolina city turning it into the No. 1 vacation destination in the United States.
Riley did this by rebuilding Charleston’s often-flooded, sewer-scented downtown — opening a wharf-side aquarium, an African American-themed museum, an expansive waterfront-hugging park that connects with a waterfront promenade giving pedestrians access to most of Charleston’s eight-mile-long waterfront.
I confess that I did not know this remarkable man.
I did, however, know many of his friends — Sister Mary William, Harriet Keyserling, Bill Regan, Francis Cantwell and Billy Keyserling. Of these Riley-orbiting personalities, Sister Mary William required, in Riley’s book, more than passing comment.
“The Catholic nuns were splendid teachers and my days at Cathedral Grammar School were a very important life experience.
I especially liked Sister Mary William, my eighth-grade teacher who was also the school principal. She was young and wore the prescribed black habit. … She was beautiful, wise, kind and joyful.”
“Author Pat Conroy, who grew up in Beaufort, was also a student of Sister Mary William’s. He included her as a character in one of his novels. ‘Joe this is the best love story,’ he told me. ‘My favorite love story.’
“Sister Mary William eventually left the convent, returned to her given name, Dorothy, and married Walter Gnann, who taught math at Beaufort High School.”
Dorothy “Dot” Gnann would go on to play a large role — a much larger role — in Beaufort County’s own development.
Of the various chapters in Riley’s memoire, I was drawn to “Growing the City” wherein Mayor Riley tells the story of Charleston’s growth to the South and West.
“A city must grow its tax base to maintain its long-term financial viability. This was a tough assignment since more than 40% of the property in downtown Charleston was tax exempt.”
Riley’s first annexation opportunity involved the huge, inclosed Citadel Shopping Mall which was seeking a permit from the U.S. Coast Guard. Mayor Riley saw this opportunity and requested a delay in that permit. Then he went to the mall owners asking that they petition (the City) for annexation.
The owners resisted but Riley was determined and soon “added $40 million to Charleston’s tax base.” After that he turned his focus on Daniel Island calling this 4,000-acre annexation his “Louisiana Purchase.”
I can’t really take issue with Joe Riley’s museums, hotels and slate-paved promenades, but I do question the use of annexation to balance the books.
Let me explain.
In the late 1990s the City of Beaufort was trying to cross-over the Beaufort River and annex parts of Lady’s Island — David Taub was then our Mayor.
One evening David and I were in Newport News, Va., — I was helping Taub sell his monkey-breeding business — and we got into an argument over Beaufort’s effort to “bring Lady’s Island, Burton and the Marine Corps Air Station into the City.”
The discussion got heated; the bartender saying, “Take it outside boys!”
Later, David and I agreed our friendship was too important to destroy on the question of annexation and “from here on, we will talk of annexation no more.”
About the same time, Sister Mary William (now known as Dot Gnann) and I were working on Beaufort County’s Comprehensive Plan.
Councilwoman Dot Gnann and Council Chair Emmett McCracken were especially focused on a 18,800 acre tract of land called “Palmetto Bluff” located on the May River near Bluffton.
Dot and Emmett — natives of southern Beaufort County — wanted Palmetto Bluff to remain rural; but Union Camp was insisting on 8,800 homes which would average one house per 2.1 acres.
Those long ago, difficult negotiations would fail because the Town of Bluffton came on the scene saying if Union Camp would petition for annexation Bluffton would give them a much better deal on density than Dot, Emmett and Beaufort County.
This technique — offering developers density for annexation — became the accepted norm in coastal South Carolina.
Today the principal problem in these parts is the fact that roads, bridges, sewer capacity cannot keep up with the growth. Now we sit — stationary in our idling SUVs — wondering what has happened to this stunning, pristine place.
We’re “Full up.”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.