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 The idyllic Yawkey Wildlife Center covers 20,000 acres of preserved wilderness in South Carolina. |
It's a paradise where humans seldom intrude
of TheColumnists.com
What is the hardest
place for the public to get into?
Would you say it’s the post office just before Christmas?
Or an art museum in New York when a Picasso exhibit is on? Maybe
the Masters in April if Tiger Woods returns to play in it.
I don’t know the answer. But in South Carolina, my vote
is for a 20,000-acre wildlife preserve in the coastal low country
about 50 miles north of Charleston.
The preserve, called the Yawkey Wildlife Center, was founded
by the late Tom Yawkey, longtime owner of the Boston Red Sox.
More about him later.
Visitors will tell you what makes the center such a tough ticket
is its unspoiled beauty. Its awesome forests, tidal marshes,
and beaches draw legions of nature lovers all year round.
The irony is that it costs nothing to see them. But you just
can’t walk in. You must ride in one of 14 seats on a little
bus that rolls along its dirt roads.
The bus usually goes out only once a week. You have to wait months—in
some cases, a year--to get a reservation.
The center doesn’t advertise. The visitors themselves bring
in other visitors.
They come away fascinated by the three-hour excursion. Word of
mouth travels fast. Right now, the center is booking tours for
December, according to Patty Wham, the center’s administrative
assistant. If you think you will be in the vicinity and don’t
mind waiting, you can call 843-546-6814 for a reservation.
“It’s worth the wait,” said Betty Crossman of
nearby Pawleys Island, who was on the tour I took recently. “I
loved seeing the forests and the animals and hearing stories
from the guide.”
Located on three tiny offshore islands near Georgetown, the center
is home to native game and more than 200 species of birds, many
making their annual flight South .
“What makes this natural setting so unique is that the people
are the visitors,” said Jamie Dozier, the center’s
manager and resident biologist. “It’s the wildlife
who are the permanent residents.”
In the 19th century, plantation owners used slaves to raise some
of the world’s finest rice crops. Later, impoverished by
the Civil War, they sold off the fertile wetlands to rich northern
industrialists who turned the land into their private hunting
ground.
Yawkey inherited his estate from his millionaire uncle when he
was just 16. The will stipulated that he could not get the money
until he was 30.
He bought the Red Sox four days after he came into his inheritance
in 1933 and remained owner for 44 years—the longest term
for any club owner in baseball history.
 Birds flock to the Yawkey Wildlife Center, where they're not disturbed by human hunters. More than 100,000 ducks and geese visit the center each year. The photo shows black vultures. |
An outdoorsman and conservationist, Yawkey spent winters at his South Carolina home—often inviting friends and ball players like Ty Cobb (who played in a sandlot game on the estate) and Ted Williams.
When Yawley died in 1976, he willed his land to the state of South Carolina and created a foundation to maintain it and fund research in wildlife preservation.
Teeming with waterfowl, deer, and alligators and covered with forests of majestic live oak and tall longleaf pine, the center is now considered one of the country’s finest nature refuges.
“It’s been in pretty much the same condition for over 100 years,” said manager Dozier, one of five employes living on the islands. “Nature has been allowed to run its course for that long. There are very few places that can say that.”
Dozier lives with his wife and 5-year-old twin daughters in a two-story, 11-room Georgian-style house. They have to take a short, 200-yard ferry ride to the mainland to get their children to school or shop in Georgetown about 16 miles away.
Hunting is now forbidden on the grounds. And so the center has become an undisturbed habitat for marine animals and migratory birds.
Records show that in December alone, the islands attract more
than 100,000 ducks and geese. Some fly by in such numbers they
can blacken the sky.
Other birds that come to rest, nest, or feed include hawks, osprey,
peregrine falcons, and golden and bald eagles. Among its resident
population are black vultures who can be seen perching on trees
or soaring in the sky as they scavenge for a meal.
Yawkey. a native of Detroit and a cum laude graduate of
Yale, looked on the Red Sox as his second love. He was a generous
and popular man, serving as American League vice president from
1956 to 1973. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in
1980.
The one blemish on his career stems from allegations that he
was unwilling to hire blacks. Yawkey denied he was a racist.
Robert Joyner, the wildlife center’s resident manager from
1977 to 2007, said that Yawkey hired blacks to work at the preserve
and got along with them well.
But he reportedly passed on signing Jackie Robinson and Willie
Mays after try-outs. And it is a fact that the Red Sox were the
last team to field a black player.
That did not happen until 1959. It was a dozen years after Robinson
broke the color barrier in his rookie season with the Brooklyn
Dodgers and three years after his retirement.
Yawkey poured millions into his team, signing and/or developing
all-stars like Joe Cronin, Jimmy Foxx, and Bobby Doerr. His lifetime
goal was to win the World Series.
It didn’t happen. The Sox came close three times—in
1946, 1967 and 1975--when they won the American League pennant.
But each time, they dropped the final game of the best-of-seven
Series to the National League winners.
Yawkey took the losses philosophically. “I never look back,”
he said.
©2010 by David Zinman. The Zinman caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photos are by Rody Stegall. This column first posted Jan. 18, 2010.
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