SiP SALUTES
“We’re Sullivan’s Islanders” Born and raised on Sullivan’s Island, 92 year-old Doris Lancaster looks back on a life full of sand spurs, smiles, and soldiers. By Marci Shore Photo by Vincent J. Musi
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You just have to stay still and take it all in. The beach is close to God. It’s peace, you see. - DORIS LANCASTER
Opposite page: Doris Lancaster, 92, pictured talking about the military dances on the island she attended as a teenager. She is standing in front of the Sullivan’s home she and her husband, Bob, bought in 1954. 68 | SiP
oris Lancaster, 92, beamed as she remembered the “grand time” she and her childhood friends had playing marbles, jumping rope, flying kites, hitchhiking rides to Isle of Palms to play the jukebox, and rolling old tires down the street at their home on Myrtle Avenue on Sullivan’s Island. Crabbing, eating figs off her aunt’s tree, picking blackberries that were “so good,” and general “porch sitting” all surfaced with a smile as she recalled activities from a “simpler time,” when only one paved road ran through Sullivan’s Island to Isle of Palms, yards were wild, unmanicured and full of sand spurs, and the island crawled with young soldiers eager to fi nd dance partners for military galas. “There were so many blue crabs back then to catch in the ocean. They were hungry for chicken legs,” says Doris. “You would put out a chicken leg or neck for bait and you’d soon see 5 or 6 crabs coming after it. You could go out and bring back two big galvanized bins of them.” Doris talks to me seated and masked in the living room of her Sullivan’s Island home on Thompson Avenue purchased by her and her husband, Robert “Bob” Lancaster in 1954. She met the Florida-born Bob when she was 17 and he was 19. It was 1945 and he was a GI stationed on the island. They were married a year and a half later.
