 | | DINING AT the Cloister. |
The Cloister opened its doors to an eager stream of local
socialites and visiting VIPs in October 1928. Coffin had brought in an old crony
named Charles F. Redden, once a truck manufacturer in Detroit, who turned out to
be a public relations genius. Redden’s simple but highly effective technique was
to invite the talkers—prominent media people—and the talked-about to experience
the pleasures of Sea Island firsthand. His greatest coup was when he got
then-President Calvin Coolidge to spend the 1928 Christmas holiday at the
Cloister and pose for a picture planting an oak tree. A giddy 10 months of sun
and fun followed. Then the stock market crashed.Coffin’s investment in
aircraft and transportation companies had propped up the Sea Island Co. He was
the biggest stockholder in many of these companies, and he went bankrupt with
them. By 1930, the Sea Island Co. was $2.5 million in the hole. Coffin sold his
Sapelo Island assets to R.J. Reynolds Jr. and also sold the Sea Island game
preserve (which the company was recently able to purchase back). Coffin’s
beloved Matilda, who had a weak heart, died in 1932, and his second marriage to
a young freelance journalist in New York was not a happy one. Martin writes that
with these setbacks, and no more money to build, life lost its meaning for
Coffin. On the morning of November 21, 1937, Jim Compton, then the general
manager, went to visit Coffin at home and found him lying on the floor in a pool
of blood, a bullet from a Savage .22-caliber rifle in his head. | "The Sea Island Co. is the reason we don't look like Hilton Head." |
“My
grandparents considered selling everything and going back to Detroit,” relates
Jones. “In the end they stayed and sold things off slowly.” However, Bill Jones
Sr. had to take the train once a month to Detroit to talk terms with the bankers
who held the notes. “My grandfather became prematurely bald when he was only in
his 20s. Some time later the bankers told him if they’d realized how young he
was they never would have worked with him.” The company did not make its
first profit until 1941. The first Bill Jones divided the stock in the company
among his four children. Since then succession has been determined largely by
picking out the child who shows the most inclination to run the business. Bill
Jones Jr. retired from day-to-day operations and spends much of his time, when
he is not off on hunting trips, at the pecan farm in western Georgia that he
owns with his brother and two sisters. All four siblings serve on the Sea Island
Board of Directors.
|
