Mount Pleasant Magazine March/April 2016

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In the Oval Office: President Ronald Reagan, far right, with, counterclockwise: U.S. Reps. Tommy Hartnett and Floyd Spence; David Stockman,
director of the Office of Management and Budget; Lyn Nofziger, assistant to the president for political affairs; U.S. Reps. Trent Lott and
Carroll Campbell; and Vice President George Bush.
Y ou can hardly talk about
former U.S. Rep. Tommy Hartnett
without talking about the Isle of
Palms. It’s not just the place he has
ended up – it’s the place where he
started. From childhood summers
spent on the beach to his first job to
the first date with his future spouse, the Isle of Palms has
played a supporting role not only in Hartnett’s back story
but in who he is and what he has accomplished.
Hartnett’s story is a fascinating tale of politics and
family in the Lowcountry, highlighted by his six years in
the U.S. House of Representatives as the first Republican
elected from South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District
since Reconstruction.
The early Days
The foundation of today’s Isle of Palms was laid in late
1944, when real estate developer J.C. Long purchased
more than 1,000 acres of land and began building roads
and houses, putting into motion IOP’s transformation
from a small summer resort community to a permanent
home for thousands of year-round residents. Hartnett was
introduced early on to the island that would become such
an important part of his life.
“J.C. Long’s wife was my daddy’s first cousin. We called
her Aunt Alberta,” Hartnett recalled. “They would give us
a house on the Isle of Palms for two or three weeks every
summer. My daddy being handicapped, J.C. always felt it
was good for him to come out and get some island air. We
would stay near their house when there were hardly any
houses out there. The farthest the island went at the time
was 21st Avenue. There was a public picnic ground there
where you could go out and picnic, but there was nobody
on the island then.”
Year after year, the family would return to the island
where Hartnett and his sisters spent their days playing on
the beach and their evenings watching fireflies. The amuse-
ment park on the island, with a carousel and swings, was
open year-round, and there was bingo, too, but the Isle of
Palms was still a strictly local retreat.
“It was very quiet – all local people. It was not any
place where people came from afar to vacation with their
families because there weren’t any big houses here and no
Photo provided by Tommy Hartnett.