This trip was
a combination business and mini-vacation. The business part was the annual
meeting of the Board of Directors of Sharing of Ministries Abroad-USA
(SOMA-USA). SOMA is a short-term mission agency that operates within the
Anglican Communion. It provides clergy and lay short-term mission teams at the
request of Bishops or Archbishops in different parts of the world to provide
conferences and seminars for the leadership of local churches, focusing on
empowering those leaders through the work of the Holy Spirit which in turn
enables them to have major impacts on their congregations. Our Board meeting
was held at the St. Christopher Church Camp and Retreat Center on Seabrooke
Island, one of the barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean shore outside of
Charleston about an hour drive from the airport. It belongs to the Anglican
Diocese of South Carolina, which itself is the oldest continuing church body in
the U.S., going back to the 1670’s. The
Center is a large complex that is also a nature preserve set in amidst an area
of wealthy people’s vacation homes and private resorts. It has a nature center
that hosts school groups year round, as well as youth summer camps and retreats
and conferences for groups and individuals. Accommodations were simple, but more than
adequate. We had a meeting room with all
we needed to conduct our conference and we took all our meals in a central
dining facility that served very good meals.
I flew into
Charleston on Sunday, March 5, picked up a rental car and had some good
bar-b-que at a place near the airport, then drove into the city to scout out
the places Suzy and I planned to stay and see later in the week. In the
mid-afternoon, I picked up one of our Board members who came in in from the
Midwest and we proceeded out to the Retreat Center. After finding our rooms and dropping our
gear, we went in search of dinner and found a great restaurant just off the
island where we had a wonderful 3-course fixed price meal. By that time we
finished it was dark, so we carefully headed back to the retreat center,
dodging several sets of deer that were crossing the road. The rest of our group made it in later that
night.
We started
our program the next day after breakfast at about 9 a.m. with opening prayer
and worship, followed by a facilitated retreat conducted by the conference
center director, Fr. Bob Lawrence. We continued after lunch until about 5:15
p.m. At 5:30, we attended a gathering hosted by Fr. Bob and his wife in their
home where we visited and admired the views of the water from their deck. We then went on to a good dinner and called
it a night. The next morning I did a
facilitated exercise and we took a Skype call from our National Director of
SOMA-USA, who had had a last minute family emergency and was unable to
participate in person. We had taken time
both days to update one another on what had gone on in our lives since the last
annual meeting, wrapping that up by lunch time and breaking for lunch, followed
by attending a center-wide prayer and communion service that is held weekly on
Tuesday’s at 12:30. Following that we regrouped and took on the business
portion of the meeting, wrapping up about 30 minutes before the evening meal,
in time to view a beautiful sunset over the water from the deck of our meeting
place. Once again it was dinner and back
to our rooms for a good night’s sleep in preparation for travel for most of the
group the next day.
On
Wednesday, March 8, I provided transportation back to the airport for one of our
Board members who had an early flight out. We left before breakfast time so
after I dropped him off I went nearby to have breakfast and kill some time
until Suzy arrived mid-morning. Once it
was close to time for her flight to arrive, I returned the rental car and met
her in the terminal. We used Uber to get down to our hotel, a “Days Inn” right
in the heart of the historic district.
The facilities were adequate, but the location was outstanding as we
could walk and see many places of interest, walk to a number of good restraunts
and when we needed to go further afield, we could catch a free shuttle bus
service called “DASH” that operates for tourists or take another Uber ride. We
were able to get an early check in and a ground floor room so Suzy did not have
to climb stairs as she was still in her boot cast from a mid-December break in
her left foot. We settled in a bit, and
then did some walking about exploring the immediate area and finding the
location of our dinner reservations and the church where the weekly concert
featuring “The Sounds of Charleston” was located. We moved up our dinner time a
bit so as to have time to make the concert as there was no reserved seating and
doors opened 30 minutes prior to the concert beginning. We had a great first meal together in a good
restaurant. I had the obligatory meal of “low country shrimp and grits” a local
tradition. Suzy also had seafood and we finished in time to get a good spot in
line for the concert, held at a historic circular congregational church built
several hundred years ago with the colonial style church graveyard and wooden
fixtures inside. The concert itself
featured music performed by professionals covering the late 1600’s to the
1930’s and featuring classical European music that would have been heard in the
finest parts of the city in colonial times.
We also heard selections of Civil War era tunes that would have been
played around encampments of both sides of the conflict. We had some Gula spirituals and stories from
an African American woman who gave us some of the background on the West
African slaves that did the work that made the area prosperous up until the
Civil War. The concert concluded with
several selections from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess which was set in Charleston,
but ironically was never performed in the city until 1970 after the civil
rights era took hold. After the concert
we headed back to our hotel room and turned in for the night as we had an early
day the next day.
On Thursday,
March 9, we took the National Park Service Tour Boat out to Fort Sumter, the
site of the beginning of hostilities in the Civil War. There are several islands throughout the near
offshore of the Charleston harbor, but Fort Sumter was built up on a rather
small and low lying one that is actually quite small. Originally built after the war of 1812 to
protect the harbor, it was further fortified as the Civil War drew near. It was not ready for combat at the time
hostilities broke out as many of its cannon had not been emplaced. After several days of bombardment, the Union
Commander, Maj Anderson, evacuated his men to another nearby island under the
cover of darkness and was rescued by the Union Navy which had blockaded the
harbor. He survived the war, rising to
the rank of Major-General and was honored by being the senior Union
representative at the flag raising ceremony at Fort Sumter as it officially
passed back to U.S. control once the war ended. The fort had been left to ruin
after WWII after serving as a coastal artillery defense strong point. Over the past years, archeological work has
uncovered much of the walls and recovered some of the buried cannons. We were on the first tour of the day, so were
able to watch as a group of school children participated in the flag raising
ceremony at the fort. Due to rising sea
levels, it is thought that the sea will begin to reclaim parts of the structure
over the next 50 years or so and perhaps even flood the parade ground. The
small museum on site is interesting and has many artifacts including the Union
storm flag that flew up until Union forces withdrew. The larger garrison flag was severely damaged
in the bombardment, but was also safeguarded by Maj Anderson’s men and is now
housed in the Charleston city museum. Once back in the city, we walked around
the pier area a bit and then caught the “Dash” shuttle to the City Museum. We stopped in and got information from the
receptionist, but decided to have lunch first and were directed to a fun little
restaurant named “Closed for Business” where we had good luncheon salads and a
pork rind appetizer. After lunch it was back to the museum and a time of wandering
about on our own. The museum is fascinating, being the oldest in the US and
having a lot of antiquities, natural history, and regional history and
artifacts. We learned a lot about the rice cultivation on large plantations
worked by West African slaves that made their owners huge amounts of
wealth. The rice was a mix of white and
yellow strains that produced a golden grain known as “Carolina Gold” and was
favored by the emperor of China who had millions of tons imported to China in
the 1700’s. At the time of the Revolutionary War, it was said that of the 10
wealthiest families in the 13 colonies, 9 resided in Charleston. After meeting
up later and deciding we had had enough touring for that day, we rode the DASH bus
back to near our hotel, took a rest and then got ready for our fancy dinner out
at one of the upscale places in the area called “High Cotton”. We were close
enough to walk and make our reservation right on time. The meal, service and atmosphere were first
rate and it was an enjoyable dining experience.
They had a live jazz trio in the bar area playing, but we were getting a
bit weary and ended up walking back to our hotel and calling it a night.
On Friday,
March 10 we had a later breakfast in the restaurant right next to the hotel and
decided to take a carriage ride—a very popular tourist activity in
Charleston. We walked a few blocks to
where the companies sell tickets and set up their customers in a nearby barn to
load up. The carriages seat 4 rows of 4 abreast, but because of Suzy’s boot
cast we were able to arrange front seats with her on the left outside. We had two mules pulling our carriage, which
is not uncommon, but they also have large draft horses that pull the same load
with just one. What we did not know is that the tours go different routes
selected by lottery once the carriage leaves the barn, so we were a bit
disappointed our tour did not go down by the end of the peninsula, but did give
us a good sense of the part of the city we visited. Our guide/driver gave us a lot of history and
humorous side lights. The houses we
passed were built close together and only one room wide, but two stories high
with a slanted floor porch on the second level that served as a sleeping porch
in hot weather. The homes were positioned to catch the sea breeze. The homes also had ground floor porches with
a privacy door that when opened meant company was welcome and when closed just
the opposite. We also passed the city
jail which had been used for several hundred years up to the late 1930’s, never
having installed electricity or running water or indoor plumbing for the
inmates. We passed a number of smaller commercial buildings that during the era
of South Carolina’s prohibition had speakeasy bars and so called “blind tiger”
clubs. It was illegal to buy or sell alcohol, but it could be made, possessed
and used. The blind tiger clubs would advertise an act by a trained blind
tiger, selling admission to see the act. While awaiting the act, a round of
“free” drinks would be served to be neighborly and as the act was inevitably
delayed, another round would be served and perhaps a third before excuses were
made that the tiger was feeling poorly and would not be performing, but folks
could come back the next night to see it for sure. No tiger, blind or otherwise,
ever performed in the city. Once our
carriage ride was complete we walked down Church Street towards the end of the
peninsula the historic city sits on. We stopped in at St Phillips Anglican
Church, the oldest continuous congregation in the US, having built the original
church in the late 1600’s. The present structure is magnificent with a
beautiful interior and lovely church yard with many heroes of history buried
there. Since like many older cities, the tourist trade features “ghost tours”,
their church graveyard is a natural stopping point, but there is a prominent
sign posted that states “The only Ghost in this church yard is the Holy Ghost.
Come learn more about Him and the other members of the Trinity at our services”
and gives the service times. Charleston had and has many historical churches
and was a city open to most all faiths to attract people to come live in a hard
place back in the days of malaria and before air conditioning. It was also home
to a large Jewish population. A large
number of French Protestants, known as Huguenots also came to live in the
Colonial Charleston, having experienced extreme persecution in France in the
late 1600’s. However, since it was an English colony, the Church of England
held sway in Charleston and while other faiths could have their own congregations
and buildings, they were known as “Meeting Houses”, not churches. Regardless of their faith, people all paid
taxes to support the Anglican Church as it was also the seat of administrative
government in a system of geographical parishes that served the same purposes
as counties do today. We continued on passing many fancy homes along the way and
stopping at one historic home to take a tour.
Our museum ticket allowed us to visit this home, so we were toured about
the home by a docent along with a small group of other folks. She spoke with a
British accent, so was not a native, but knew her stuff. The home had been restored to its colonial
condition and was the place where George Washington stayed while making his
stop in Charleston during his tour of the southern states in 1791. There were
many outstanding pieces of period furniture original to that era, including a
priceless large enclosed bookcase/secretary and the chair Francis Marion (“The
Swamp Fox” of Revolutionary War fame) owned. The home had a lovely English
garden with some spring flowers out behind the separate kitchen house and slave
quarters. A few more blocks brought us
to the water’s edge and the area known as “The Battery” as it had cannons in
place to defend the city in times past.
Homes with water views were huge, even for this day and age and
especially so for the colonial and antebellum period. We walked back up the
east side of the peninsula along the seawall admiring the large homes across
the road. We walked by a two block neighborhood of restored homes from the
colonial period known as “Rainbow Row” because of the colorful stucco on their
exteriors. They are all connected row houses and had become slums by WWII, but
have been restored and the area is once again a jewel near the harbor. Our last touring stop of the day was the Old
Slave Market, which is a museum on the site of where the last domestic slave
market was located. Although the
importation of slaves from Africa had been outlawed in the early 1800’s, in the
Southern States prior to the end of the Civil war, the slaves and children of
slaves born in the US were sold and traded like any other commodity. The museum is a sobering history lesson and
reinforced what we all learned in school.
We walked back past our hotel and took a short rest, then headed up the
street to eat at a local “downhome” cooking place called “Jestine’s Kitchen”.
We split meals of fried chicken, a fried oyster “po-boy” and enjoyed sides of
fried okra washed down with “sweet tea”.
It was late afternoon so we called it an early dinner and walked it off
doing some window shopping down King Street, which is the high fashion district
near our hotel with all kinds of clothing, and accessory shops as well as the
national brand stores. We needed a nap after all of that and took one, going
out again after dark to walk up King street some more in search of ice cream,
which we found after a few false starts. We were ready to call it a night again
and did so after some more walking around the city at night. It is a very safe place to be and there were
many people out and about, to include cadets in uniform from The Citadel which
is located in the city. A lot of colleges were on Spring break, so many people
out and about were college age young folks, but without exception all were
behaving themselves, at least at that point in the evening.
Saturday,
March 11 saw us sleeping in a bit and looking for a nice place to have
brunch. After an Internet search we
settled on The Palmetto Café located in one of the high end hotels a few blocks
from where we were staying and we were not disappointed. We got right in and
were treated to linen tablecloths and real silver, an outstanding brunch buffet
and service that addressed you by name and catered to your every need during the
meal. After lunch we revisited King Street on the way back to our room and Suzy
stopped in an art gallery where she had spied a painting she liked in the
window. It turned out the manager on duty is also an artist and shared some
good stories of the other artists with us.
We had a good time visiting with her and before we left, Suzy picked out
her birthday present from me -- a small painting which we had shipped home. At
that point we had to hustle back to our room and finish packing to meet our
check out time of noon. Since our flight
was not until 3:30, we left our bags with the desk clerk and went walking
around one more time through the public market and some of the other side
streets nearby. We did an Uber out to the airport in plenty of time for our
flight, which ended up being further delayed and eventually headed home on a
one hour plane ride back. It took us as
long or longer to retrieve our car from parking and make our way home through
heavy traffic. All was well when we got
home and we could both say we had seen and done a lot in Charleston. It should be on everyone’s bucket list to
visit and spend time in at least once.
