“The Sea Island
Co. is the reason we don’t look like Hilton Head,” says Pat Morris, executive
director of the Glynn County Historical Society. Anyone who has ever visited the
coastal areas of the Deep South can see the perils of over-enthusiastic
development—bumper-to-bumper traffic, strip malls and too many tourists. | | THE SEA Island resort has long drawn the well-heeled, who take advantage of the bucolic atmosphere. |
The
Right Crowd
Sea Island has had many visitors in the past, but largely
well-heeled hotel guests and vacation-home buyers looking for a quiet retreat.
George and Barbara Bush honeymooned there in 1945 and returned for their 50th
wedding anniversary. Jimmy Carter has visited (despite the distinctly Republican
flavor of the place). Winston Churchill’s daughter Sarah wed the photographer
Anthony Beauchamp in a hastily arranged ceremony at the home of Bill Jones Sr.
and his wife, Kit, in 1949. Eugene O’Neill wrote Ah Wilderness there. Bill Gates
has vacationed there, as has John Travolta. Recent golf tournaments such as the
Walker Cup and the UBS Cup have brought in the “right kind” of people, says
Peggy Cate, a longtime resident of the area whose late husband was the grandson
of Glynn County’s most famous historian, Margaret Davis Cate.
Despite its
cache, locals betray a certain element of trepidation about the G8 Summit.
Residents speak, in that just-between-you-and-me way in which Southerners bring
up unpleasant trifles, of concerns over the less-desirables who might accompany
the summiteers, although one of the reasons the White House selected the resort
is the strict, yet discreet, security. If everything goes according to plan,
demonstrators protesting global poverty and environmental degradation, who are
now part and parcel of G8 summits, will be no closer than Savannah, 75 miles to
the north, along with the international press corps.
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