BFT 2019 CPC Lowcountry Yellow Pages

© 2019 CPC Yellow Pages • The Lowcountry Phone Directory FLORISTS–FOUNDATION 123
Florists-Whol
Smoak Wholesale
481 Sidneys Rd Wltrbr...............................843 539-1444
Food Banks
Lowcountry Food Bank
1 Guess Dr Ymsse......................................843 589-4118
Food Products-Whol & Mfrs
Timbo Deli Distributors LLC
1072 Argent Blvd Un A...............................843 645-9991
Ultimate Deli Provisions
61 Red Oaks Way Rdglnd...........................843 645-9995
Foods-Carry Out
The Kitchen
Freshly Prepared Home Cooked Meals To Go
1 Merchants Lane Ste 102 Bft...........843 929-8643
Village Pasta Shoppe The
10-B Johnston Way Blftn...........................843 540-2095
Foods-Delivery Service
GOURMET ON WHEELS INC
Healthy Home Cooked Meals Delivered
Fresh To Your Door Weekly
Beaufort, Lady’s Island, Port Royal, HHI, Bluffton & Sun City
New Parents, Birthday, Get Well, Sympathy Gifts
See Our Weekly Menu At
gourmetonwheels.org
Or Call Tony ...........................843 812-8870
Foot Specialists
Please See: Physicians & Surgeons-DPM-
Podiatrists (Foot)
Foresters-Consulting
American Forest Management Inc
2096 Cottageville Hwy Wltrbr.....................843 539-2507
Morrison Forestry & Real Estate Inc
1469 Browning Gate Rd Estll.....................803 625-2757
Wise Batten Inc
761 E 3rd St Estll.......................................803 625-4256
Forestry Services
Hanna & Hanna Incorporated
483 Morrison Ave Estll...............................803 625-3350
Or...............................................................803 625-3363
Foster Care
NDC Inc....................................................843 717-1765
Foundation Contractors
Bello Foundations Inc
265 Stoney Xing Blftn.................................843 757-4967
D L Avant & Son Inc
127 Shady Oaks Ln Wltrbr.........................843 538-1677
Lowcountry Basement Systems
.................................................................843 836-3377
The key is not the will to win …
everybody has that. It is the will to
prepare to win that is important.
-Bobby Knight
LOWCOUNTRY
PROFILE
Woody Collins figures the shrimping industry in
Beaufort County is roughly 100 years old, which
means he has been connected to it in some
manner for more than half its history.
He also figures someone needs to capture that
history before it ebbs away entirely.
For years Collins tried to find a writer willing to
cobble his research, interview notes and
never-before-published photos into a coffee-table
book. Finding no takers, he decided to write the
book himself. He has an interested publisher, a
former documentary filmmaker as an editor and
about 80,000 words written on the Apple laptop he
purchased just for this project.
He also has a fervent desire to get the book into
print sometime this year.
“I even have a contingency plan in case
something happens to me before it’s finished,” said
Collins, better known as Captain Woody. He turns
77 in 2019.
Collins purchased an old camper and parked it
out back next to the garden at his Sheldon home.
Its walls are tacked with newspaper clippings and
old photographs of trawlers. An overhead
compartment brims with books about the history
of shrimping and of Beaufort County. This is where
Collins is writing “Where Have All the Shrimp Boats
Gone?”
The urgency of his project reflects the state of a
once-strong industry that could vanish before his
eyes. The number of trawler licenses issued by
South Carolina is about a quarter what it was in the
1980s. Fuel prices, and competition from foreign
producers and farm-raised shrimp are oft-cited
culprits of the industry’s demise. Collins adds to the
list fewer and fewer people willing to spend time
away from their families.
“There were years I spent more time in the bunk
on my boat than I did at home,” he said.
Collins seeks an accurate, unvarnished history
— no fact and no story goes in unless verified at
least three times. Even so, he says his greatest
challenge is deciding what to omit. He has
collected fascinating stories of the Portuguese
immigrants who launched the Beaufort County
industry in the early to mid-20th century; summer
deckhands who went on to become surgeons; and
rough-and-tumble captains who were literally
casting their fortunes into the sea along with their
nets.
Although storytelling will be central, Collins
wants to write something more than a sentimental
collection of old fish tales, which is one reason he
initially hesitated to inject personal anecdotes.
However, his editor, California-based Peter Allison,
encouraged him to include personal reflections.
Woody Collins
by Jeff Kidd
And for good reason — Collins could hardly
omit someone involved in several facets of the
industry, from one end of Beaufort County to the
other.
The son of a Parris Island Marine, Collins’
introduction to shrimping came as a youngster,
when he played on the docks in Port Royal. One day,
he convinced a friend’s father, the noted Capt. Tony
Vukas, to take him out on his trawler. Vukas did
more than that; he treated him like a deckhand.
“Take the wheel.” “Steer us over there.” “Grab this
line.”
“I was apprenticing, and I didn’t even know it,”
Collins said.
Eventually, he bought his own boat and docked
the leaky “Two Sisters” near the north end of Hilton
Head Island, where Benny Hudson was establishing
his seafood market and restaurant on Broad Creek.
Collins noted all the folks in funny shorts and
colorful shirts who passed through Hudson’s and
pegged them for south-end tourists. He figured a
market closer to the resorts would do a brisk
business, so he opened a shop in a vacant car wash
in Coligny Plaza. He leased the place on a
handshake deal with developer Norris Richardson
— $250 a month. Richardson also agreed to put a
roof over the exposed car wash bay if Collins would
run electrical wiring and do the other finishing
work needed to make a proper store.
Business was indeed brisk, and when Collins
sold the market four years later, he made enough
money to retire the “Two Sisters” and purchase a
more seaworthy boat.
From there, Collins found himself selling his
catch directly off the deck of his vessel at Palmetto
Bay Marina. When its owners broke the news that
they had sold to a developer who planned to ring
the place with retail shops, they cautioned he
probably would not be allowed to sell on the docks
any longer. However, one of the former owners,
John Rumsey, offered to partner with him on a new
seafood restaurant.
Captain Woody’s was born.
In 1999, after a decade or so running a
restaurant, Collins sold to Kentucky natives Russell
Anderson and his wife Shannon Wright. They later
relocated the original Hilton Head Island restaurant
to Target Road and opened a second restaurant in
Bluffton. However, they kept the name, and Captain
Woody’s remains a popular haunt for locals and
visitors alike.
The sale of the restaurant allowed Collins to
return his full attention to the water. He spent his
final years in the industry shrimping out of the Port
Royal docks and moved his home from North
Forest Beach on Hilton Head Island to Sheldon in
northern Beaufort County.
In picking a spot to retire, he and his wife passed
on waterfront property, choosing instead an old
farmhouse built beneath three gigantic oaks.
However, Collins can walk past a treeline beyond
his garden to an adjacent lot. There, he can fish a
creek any time he wants.
And of course, the water still calls him from
inside the camper, where he speeds to complete his
work.
“It doesn’t matter to me if lots of people read it
now. I just want to get it out there,” Collins said.
“When I’m writing, I’m thinking about people who
will pick up this book 50 years from now.
“I’m writing for people who will want to know
but who will have no one to tell them.”