Myrtle Beach officials should go back to the future

In 1924, Dr. W. L. Harrelson brought his little family to Myrtle Beach from Marion. He also brought the first drug store (Delta Drug

Company in the Chapin complex) and shooting gallery. Myrtle Beach was not yet incorporated.

His son, my father, “Bubba,” with his little dog Blackie, hunted squirrels and turkey where today stands a thriving and bustling, The Market Common and the Myrtle Beach International Airport, formerly Harrelson Municipal Airport.

He and his best friend, “Booby” (Dr. Homes Buck Springs, admired Myrtle Beach surgeon and avid outdoorsman), learned to swim in Withers Swash as skinny little tanned “toe-heads.”

Bubba and Booby would heat up the lead and pour it into impressions in the sand and sell these weights to our “guests” on the beach. Some consider this the first commerce of our South Carolina Grand Strand.

Fast forward to 1938 and the founding of Myrtle Beach, with Dr. W. L. Harrelson as its first (and third) mayor and a city council built on visionairies with names like Cannon, Benfield, Rourk, Macklen, Shirley and Hussey. These were men who cared for Myrtle Beach and moved here to earn a living and to raise their families.

The first city council focused on infrastructure, which included beach access. They wanted to make sure our guests could get here and get to the beach. So they brought in U.S. 501 and established all the city’s public beach accesses you see today.

They wanted unbridled access to that beach.

I wonder, as local government puts restrictions on access to what once was (and truly is today) our most treasured asset, how maybe we should go back to the beginning and remember why those men did what they did in those early Myrtle Beach days.

Could we begin a city-wide campaign to become the friendliest city in the nation, as is our neighbor, Charleston? Can we treat our 15 million yearly visitors as our valued guests again? And also begin change by making this place beautiful again with public area landscaping, as seen in Mt. Pleasant medians, Orlando highways and downtown Greenville?

There are intersections here just begging for major landscaping.

And how to fight crime? Put in heavy lighting downtown, just as you see in The Market Common, where there is little if any crime. The result? Our visitors will want to come back to less crime and more natural beauty.

Just ask Charleston, Mt. Pleasant, Greenville and Orlando.

There is always something to be learned in history, if we just pay attention.

May the minds of city council members go back to 1938 and the notion that our greatest natural asset should always be free for our guests.

The writer lives in Myrtle Beach.

This story was originally published June 11, 2016 at 11:08 AM with the headline "Myrtle Beach officials should go back to the future."