Letter From Charleston

At 8 in the morning, the day’s heat was already rising as I walked toward a funeral service I hoped to attend. It was the last Saturday in June in my adopted hometown of Charleston, S.C., and a long line of mourners had been forming for hours near a stadium in the middle of the city. Black and white, young, old, and very old, the mourners had come from near and quite far to hear President Obama eulogize one of the nine Charlestonians who had been gunned down in a racist rage 10 days earlier.

Lost in thought, I looked up as a beautiful young black woman, easily a third my age, seemed to appear from nowhere. “You look like you could use a hug,” she said. This lovely person wrapped her arms around me, and just like that, the heavy lump in my throat released my tears. I held tight for a moment, grateful, then each of us continued on to join the others.

In the 11-plus years since I moved here from the East End, Charleston has given me any number of such moments — but none quite like this. I stood through the morning, one of thousands wilting from temperatures in the 90s — and one of the thousands who did not make it inside the stadium, which holds only 5,500. None of us felt we had waited in vain. We had come together as a community, and that mattered. I drove home, minutes away, and watched on television as Mr. Obama delivered his memorable thoughts in word, and in song.

Charleston is an extraordinary place, where bittersweet history intertwines with physical beauty, where fascinating, often painful and violent social interactions are veiled in myth, and where, nonetheless, there is a softness to life that springs from decorous traditions, civic pride, and an enduring faith embraced by African-Americans.

Enhancing that softness are waters visible from almost everywhere — the Ashley and Cooper Rivers that merge in Charleston Harbor, other rivers, smaller waterways, and endless acres of marshland. The downtown historic district, lined with live oaks and crepe myrtles, is a grid of ancient streets, some original cobblestone, where elegant multistory homes, with as many as three levels of porches (or piazzas, as they are known), have stood, some since 1800 or earlier. 

F l o w e r s bloom everywhere, and Charleston gardens are the stuff of legend. On moving here, I immediately joined the Garden Club and the Horticultural Society to learn how to manage my garden’s nine-month growing season. The first rule of gardening here is: prune, and prune again. My garden is my refuge, and the density of roots in the soils around my 112-year-old house reminds me of those who dug and planted here before, and of the legacy and the opportunity they left for me.

Charleston has been prominent in the news ever since that awful Wednesday evening in June, when, only about a mile from my house, a hate-filled young man massacred all but one member of a Bible-study group at the historic Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church. The shooting happened against the backdrop of tragic deaths around the country that spurred the Black Lives Matter movement. But the killings here brought home, even more pointedly, the odious bigotry that clings stubbornly to too much of America. What distinguished Charleston that week was the intelligent and compassionate leadership of our mayor and police chief, guided in part by the African-American clergy.

More remarkable was the quality of grace demonstrated by the immediate family members in the hours and days following the massacre. They, and others in the Mother Emanuel congregation, became a beacon of love and forgiveness to the rest of us here, and to much of the rest of the country.

We have had no riots. No looting. No standoffs with police. Instead, we have seen a resurgence of citywide efforts to ramp up interracial understanding and to build an African-American museum at the Cooper River wharf, where thousands of Africans were dragged ashore during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Also, it was with no small effort by Charleston officials and business leaders that pressure was brought on intransigent state legislators and a right-leaning governor, finally, to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia.

I had come to Charleston to start life with a new husband, Richard. Though I knew no one, I immediately felt at home, something I attributed to summers I spent as a child with my maternal grandparents in Lewisburg, W.Va., a Southern-flavored town complete with a Confederate cemetery. Growing up in the North, I did not think of myself as Southern, but I knew my mother never adapted to New York life. She is long gone, but I feel now that part of my family has come full circle.

I made friends here easily, and I remember that Richard, who was New York born and bred, was amazed when, strolling around our neighborhood for the first time, more than a dozen people greeted him. But it was when he became ill, slowly receding behind the curtain of vascular dementia, that I came to understand how intrinsic the kindness of strangers is here.

There was, for instance, an afternoon when, as was Richard’s habit, he leashed up our collie for her late-day walk. He was, by that time, given to losing his balance. I followed him and watched as he slowly fell into the grass a block from home. A contractor was standing nearby. I asked for his help, and in the gentlest manner, he lifted Richard from the ground, helped him into his truck, drove him home, and got him up the front steps, not once impinging on his dignity.

It was not the last time I would go out onto my street to find help to get Richard up steps or off the floor. Dementia care is all about good management, and as a result of Charleston’s caring nature, I found respite, support, counseling, home health, hospice, and finally, funeral arrangements, all unmatched in sensitivity.

Charleston, however, has never been all things kind. The racial divide that stems from nearly two centuries of slavery remains profound. It distresses me that I have met only a few African-Americans in social or cultural settings in all this time. The city has been justifiably criticized for overgentrification, with longtime black neighborhoods broken up downtown, and white and institutional money fixing up and reselling block after block of older houses.

The Charleston School District is an embarrassing example of de facto segregation. Domestic violence occurs in South Carolina, including Charleston County, more than in any other state, and most of the abusers are armed with guns. The Charleston Post and Courier, our daily paper, won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its five-part series on this staggering problem.

At the same time, the past five years have seen big changes in the small jewel of a city I moved to in 2004. Highway traffic and congestion are rampant now, and open space is shrinking. Boeing, the aerospace giant, has built a manufacturing complex next to the airport in North Charleston to assemble and paint its 787 Dreamliner. That alone has created more than 7,000 new jobs, and commuters.

Raves in travel magazines have brought a growing stream of tourists, as well as wedding parties, and new hotels with more than 1,500 rooms are under construction. Developers from this state and elsewhere have rushed to throw up apartment buildings in the city, and Mount Pleasant, a Charleston suburb, is said to be the nation’s fourth fastest growing municipality.

So far, though, despite all this, community-focused activity has been re-energized by the terrible event in June, and it continues apace. All summer, volunteers arrived every day to refresh the array of bouquets and renew well-wishes that formed a spontaneous shrine in front of Mother Emanuel. The week after the tragedy, some 3,000 people, of every description, joined hands and walked at sunset across the beautiful, two-and-a-half-mile cable bridge over the Cooper River between downtown and Mount Pleasant. It was, they said, an expression of love and solidarity.

In only a few weeks, Charlestonians donated several million dollars to help educate the children of those killed, help their families recover, and restore the church. The City of Charleston covered all expenses for nine funerals. A chamber ensemble assembled a free, and moving, unity concert early in August, in which an eclectic combination of artists — gospel, classical, jazz, and poetry — performed before a capacity audience. Donations went to the church and family funds.

And over the Labor Day weekend, a Charleston’s Days of Grace drew thousands to a new two-day rally and conference designed to spur grassroots efforts toward greater social justice, reduced gun violence, and support for voting rights, quality education, and affordable health care.

Those of us who have come to love this place harbor the hope that its soul will remain intact. If the continuing response to the tragedy is any clue, we will be all right.

Susan Rosenbaum Lyons was a reporter for The Star for 10 years before moving south. She lived in Amagansett, which she loved every bit as much as Charleston.