Mount Pleasant Magazine July/August 2017

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Pearman Bridge was built in the 1960s, that unleashed
development because it was much easier to get to
Mount Pleasant.”
The completion of the Silas N. Pearman Bridge in
1966 certainly played a key role in Mount Pleasant’s
meteoric rise from small bedroom community to the
fourth largest and fastest-growing town in the state,
and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, which replaced the
Pearman and the older John P. Grace Memorial Bridge in
2005, didn’t hurt either. But according to Riley, the most
important factor in Mount Pleasant’s growth has been the
people who were elected to lead the town during his 40-
year reign as mayor of Charleston.
“I got along with all the mayors of Mount Pleasant,”
said Riley. “We never had any arguments. We worked
together. We were all part of the same community, and we
approached it that way. We had a great team.”
Riley has fond memories of all the Mount Pleasant
mayors he served with. For example, he remembered
that McGrath Darby’s father ran a full-service gas station
on Coleman Boulevard. On Saturdays, customers – and
probably nearly residents as well – could hear the sounds
of the Metropolitan Opera drifting from the station’s
radio. Johnnie Dodds, mayor of Mount Pleasant from
1976 to 1984, was, in an earlier time, Riley’s baseball
coach on Sullivan’s Island. Riley didn’t play ball on the
Charleston peninsula because his parents owned a home
on Isle of Palms and his family stayed there from July until
Labor Day each year.
Riley said he and Dodds “went way back.”
“He was one of my heroes and a kindhearted civic
leader,” the longtime mayor of Charleston commented.
Mayor Johnnie Dodds
enjoys a Mount Pleasant
Recreation Department
baseball game.
Photo courtesy of the Dodds family.
Photo by Vince Streano for HDR.
When the John P. Grace Bridge, right,
was built in 1929, Mount Pleasant’s
population was approximately
1,415. When the Silas N. Pearman
Bridge, center, opened in 1966,
around 5,636 people lived in Mount
Pleasant. By 2005, when the Arthur
Ravenel Jr. Bridge was completed,
the town had a population of
approximately 58,633.