Hilton Head People

Huntley Tarleton has always been a “car guy.” “My dad got me into cars when I was a teenager,” he said.

Tarleton started running the Motoring Midway as part of the Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival and Concours d’Elegance in 2007.

Father-in-law Charles Mistele, Tarleton and his son Caldwell, have since made the festival a family event.

The Motoring Midway
In 2007, Tarleton took over the Quest for Style and Speed, which was a hodgepodge of different vehicles at the time.

“I started focusing really on the vehicles and exhibits,” he said. Under Tarleton’s leadership, the Quest for Style and Speed was renamed the Motoring Midway, and it started offering exhibits meant to appeal to more people.

PHOTO BY ROB KAUFMAN

CREATING A WORLD-CLASS CAR SHOW TAKES EQUAL AMOUNTS OF AMBITION, PERSEVERANCE AND CREATIVITY. PACKING THE WHOLE THING UP AND MOVING IT ONTO A GOLF COURSE WHILE MAINTAINING SAID WORLD-CLASS STATUS, WELL THAT TAKES AN ENGINEER.

Enter transition chairman Merry Harlacher, longtime Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival volunteer and retired electrical engineer. Every detail, and there are many, of the festival’s move from the wide-open spaces of Honey Horn to the lushly manicured fairways of Port Royal Golf Club has been mapped with painstaking precision by his sharp, analytical mind.

“It helps to have that kind of thinker, yeah,” said Harlacher with a modest chuckle.

Almost everyone knows that Hilton Head Island is home to some of the most beautiful shoreline and golf courses on the eastern seaboard. Few know that the island also boasts a remarkable anti-poverty program for low-income families, one that needs to be considered for replication in poor neighborhoods from New York to Detroit to Oakland.

Under the leadership of Narendra Sharma, who spent 32 years in the operations division of the World Bank, Hilton Head’s Neighborhood Outreach Connection (NOC) provides low-income families with health services, after-school and summer tutoring, and adult English classes.

Dr. Sharma showed three townhouses, each with four classrooms, in the low-income Oaks neighborhood.

Art world and pop culture icon set to return to Hilton Head

Peter Max has used bold colors, uplifting images and an uncommon artistic diversity to touch nearly every phase of American culture for more than four decades.

He has painted for six U.S. presidents. He was the official artist of the 2006 U.S. Olympics Team. He has been the featured artist for five Super Bowls, the World Series, the U.S. Open, the Indy 500, the New York City Marathon and the Kentucky Derby.

His work has flown on the sides of a Boeing 777 jet, sailed on the sides of a 144,000-ton cruise ship and decorated the sides of a 600-foot Woodstock stage.

Bobby Ryder on a mission to keep his unique style of entertainment goingBobby Ryder embraces an old-school style of entertainment, and he pushes no shortage of traditional showbiz buttons in performances that wouldn’t be out of place in a hip Las Vegas lounge post-midnight.

“We’re going to be here until the wee hours,” he promises a midweek audience at The Jazz Corner, suggesting a special night at one of his ongoing gigs in a local career that spans four decades and counting. “Of course,” he adds with a grin, “this is Hilton Head so the wee hours means sometime between 9:30 and 10 o’clock.”

He swings into a Sinatra standard, “I’ve Got the World on a String,” alternately clipping and extending mid-range vocal notes as a seasoned trio lays down stellar support. The Bobby Ryder Quartet segues into “Where or When” and it won’t be long before the front man reaches down for one of his three saxophones and accents the accompaniment with a graceful soprano solo storm and learned trade-offs with pianist Norm Gagne.

Jeffrey Watkins has made a name for himself locally, on Broadway, and on stage around the world as a master of the theatre. This month, he portrays “Sir Dennis Galahad, The Dashingly Handsome” in The Arts Center of Coastal Carolina’s production of Spamalot, and we’re proud to feature him in the first installment of our reinvigorated On the Bench interview as he opens up on being dashingly handsome, his habit of climbing large mountains, and his alarming command of avian aerodynamics.

RBC Heritage tournament director Steve Wilmot wasn’t born with a 9-iron in hand. In fact, when he first arrived on Hilton Head Island, the Moorestown, N.J., native considered himself more of a football, basketball and baseball guy.  Cut to 27 years later, and he is now a walking encyclopedia of golf, and close personal friends with some of the game’s biggest names. 

Sir William Innes may be the official mascot of the RBC Heritage, but Steve Wilmot is its driving force, and since taking over as tournament director in 1997, he has taken a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of credit. 

He has guided the tournament through dark times (the bankruptcy of WorldCom in 2003 and Verizon’s exit in 2011). He has been there through good times (the purse has more than tripled since 1997 and $23 million has been donated to local charities since his arrival). 

With the 45th RBC Heritage just around the corner (April 15-21), Wilmot took a few moments to speak with Golfer’s Guide about the 2013 event and his favorite Heritage memories. 

Save your puns; Brian Pope, principal of St. Francis Catholic School, has heard them all.

As soon as he steps through the door of a classroom he’s met by an enthusiastic chorus of fourth graders: “Good morning, Mr. Pope!” He returns the greeting then asks one student, by name, what she’s working on. It’s a class project about the dangers of drugs.

Brian Pope, the new principal of St. Francis by the Sea parish school on Hilton Head, prides himself on knowing all of his students on a first-name basis. “The relationships between teachers and students here is very close,” he tells a visitor, “and creating that special bond is part of our effort to build character as well as guide a child’s spiritual and educational growth.”

Photo by Russell Greene

The north island Catholic school, home to 180 students from 4-year-old pre-kindergartners to eighth-grade middle school teens, has been his only professional home since earning a secondary education credential from New York’s Niagara University in 2001.  And the 32-year-old Pope, who indeed has heard every religious pun possible about his surname, seems well-suited for a position that puts him in charge of guiding youngsters toward productive futures.

As a boy, Warner Peacock spent weekends driving around with his car salesman grandfather “prospecting” for customers. As a teenager, Peacock helped at his father’s GMAC dealership. With ties that deep, he never really stood a chance at doing anything else for very long.

“I keep getting drawn back into it,” Peacock said. “It’s a hard business, but I think I’m pretty good at it.”