“If you put two Charlestonians in a big room full of people, somehow they are going to find each other and they will start talking about Charleston and their memories of it,” says Mary Coy, author of To Hear Them Tell It: Memories of Growing Up in Charleston.
This inclination seems to be unique to Charlestonians and as a fourth generation Charlestonian, Coy has done her fair share of storytelling and story listening. But when she was asked by her alma mater, the College of Charleston, to give a talk on what it was like to grow up in Charleston, she decided to reach out and tell not only her own stories, but those of other natives as well.
“I only had about forty-five minutes for the speech, but the stories I had collected needed to be told. So many people have already passed away without sharing their memories and these stories are ones that the majority of people who grew up here or have lived here a long time would like to hear,” says Coy.
So she began interviewing more people. From residents who once lived South of Broad to the present-day Hampton Park area, Coy gathered as many memories as she could of Charleston from the 1920s through the 1950s. And the more she listened, the more she realized how many common threads they all shared.
“The book is really about the sense of place, the collective consciousness, of what so many people remember. It amazed me how often I would be talking with someone about one thing and the next person would tell the same story but from a different perspective,” says Coy.
In all she spoke with more than two dozen Charlestonians and what she found was a densely interconnected, vibrant patchwork of history, as well as some previously unknown facts about her own history in Charleston.
“I grew up in Charleston during the sixties and I remember our family moving from downtown to the suburbs, but I didn’t know why,” says Coy.
She never questioned it until she spoke with native after native who told her about growing up in downtown before they moved to the suburbs.
“It wasn’t until I spoke with one ninety-two-year-old man who explained the sudden migration. Post World War Two, people suddenly had access to government-backed loans. They could buy land and homes on loan and at a low interest rate, so people across the country – not just Charleston – began an exodus to the suburbs. One woman described how excited they were to have a new home and not the old, drafty one they lived in downtown. Those homes were hard to heat and the paint was always chipping, so it was a thrill to buy something new,” says Coy.
It was the beginning of the growth of West Ashley and James Island as downtown residents flocked to new land and new homes in “the country.”
And it was the country. One man whom Coy spoke with remembered the crop dusters’ airfield that used to be located off of Stinson Drive on Savannah Highway. As a boy, he said, he would go hunting with his friends around the farms near the airfield and bring back rabbits for dinner.
Another West Ashley resident recalled the prisoner of war camp located just off of Colony Drive, where prisoners from German u-boats captured offshore would be held.
“It was interesting because I had heard there was one, but they not only remembered it, they remembered watching the trucks go by with German soldiers, who would throw notes out to the kids as they passed. Of course, they didn’t know what was written on them because it was in German,” Coy says, smiling.
There are a number of stories about early West Ashley life in To Hear Them Tell It. From the early days of St. Andrews High School to roller skating on Savannah Highway and bicycling from West Ashley to the Boy Scout camp on Wadmalaw because there was so little traffic, Coy’s book shares memories of Charleston the same way two natives will swap stories: with a smile and a warmth born of fierce love and loyalty to a city that has maintained its small town charm despite its rapid growth.
“I didn’t write this book for profit; that had nothing to do with it. It had to do with my own interest in Charleston and its history and people. Being able to put all three interests together in this book left me feeling so fulfilled. But it was not only for my own gratification but to give these people an outlet and to have their memories recorded for others to read and discover. It was a very rewarding experience,” says Coy.
To find out more about Charleston as told by long-time residents as well as to learn more about the migration from downtown to West Ashley and other suburban areas, check out To Hear Them Tell It: Memories of Growing Up in Charleston, available on www.Amazon.com as well as at the Historic Charleston Foundation.
