Page 74 - 547788_Sun City_Flipbook

Left: The clubhouse at Jekyll Island,
Continued from the previous page
Robert Smalls, who was born into
slavery in 1839 but freed himself in
1862 by seizing a Confederate transport
ship in the harbor, sailing it to the Union playground for a very exclusive group of
blockade and turning it over to Union
forces. After the war, he was elected to
the South Carolina legislature and later
to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Beaufort is the second oldest town in
South Carolina and includes much of the
charm that travelers love about historic
Charleston but in a smaller package.
Here amongst the stately old homes one
can find trees that once were used for
hangings and where many pesky pirates
met their end.
Much of downtown Savannah is still
organized around the 22 public squares
that founder James Oglethorpe designed
for the city in 1733. From ornate and
large to small and simple, the squares
are intricately entwined with the history
of the city. Juliette Gordon Low, founder
of the Girl Scouts, lived on one of the
squares and started her organization
there. When Low died, she was buried
in her Girl Scout uniform. Songwriter
Johnny Mercer (“Moon River” and
many others) had a house on one of the
squares that was later bought by Jim
Williams, whose trial for murder was
the centerpiece of John Berendt’s book
“Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil.” And of course, the movie “Forrest
Gump” starts in one of the squares,
with a feather floating down from the
cathedral steeple to land at Forrest’s feet
as he sits on a park bench.
72 | SUNRAYS JUNE 2015
Our last stop, on Georgia’s Jekyll Island,
provided the most unexpected history.
The smallest of the state’s four barrier
islands accessible by causeway, Jekyll in
the late 1800s became a private winter
wealthy and influential northeasterners,
with names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt,
Pulitzer, and JP Morgan. They built an
enormous and luxurious clubhouse and
later their own “cottages” of 12,000 square
feet or so. At one time, it was estimated
that one-sixth of all the world’s wealth was The Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll
Technicians at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island work with turtle
patients that have been rescued and brought to them for rehabilitation.
Georgia, features a presidential suite
with a turret, from which the entire is-
land can be viewed.
represented in the 53 members of the club.
By the 1940’s, club membership had
declined as the wealthy developed a
taste for winter delights in Florida. The
clubhouse still exists, taken over by the
state in 1947, and tourists can now stay
where the rich used to play. Some of the
33 buildings in the historic district can
be rented or toured. Others are used as
museums, art galleries or bookstores.
Island is the only facility in Georgia that
specializes in rescuing and rehabilitating
sea turtles. Visitors can walk through
a sea turtle exhibition area and view
“patients” in the clinic area. For a modest
fee, we adopted a baby named Sprout, a
loggerhead turtle who had been rescued on
the beach last summer when she hatched
too late to join her siblings on the race to
the water. In the months since our trip,
we have received regular email updates
and photos of our baby. The updates on
our adopted turtle will continue until she
is released back to the ocean sometime
this summer.
ONLINE: SCTEXAS.ORG