Hilton Head People

LOCAL FOUNDATION CONTINUES TO MAKE A NATIONAL IMPACT

BY AMY BARTLETT | PHOTO BY ROB KAUFMAN

When Jesse Spina was a pre-teen battling Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, his eye was on a prize bigger than his own struggles: “helping his friends from the hospital.”

COMPETITION DIRECTOR MONA HUFF RETIRING

BY AMY COYNE BREDESON | PHOTO BY RUTHE RITTERBECK

Before retiring and moving to the Lowcountry in 2006, Mona Huff taught high school math and worked as director of technology for a school district in New York. When she and her husband, Joe, moved south, Mona began volunteering with the Hilton Head International Piano Competition. Just a few years later she became the competition director.

Real weddings of lasting love.

1. SECOND HELPINGS VOLUNTEER JOINS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Amy Fee, a Hilton Head Island resident, was recently named to the board of directors of Second Helpings. Fee has extensive experience in sales and marketing. She retired in 2019 from Morgan Stanley as vice president and director of business development. 

Meet a collection of the Lowcountry’s unique personalities.

Not a word out of place

Roger Pinckney writes for his love of the Lowcountry

Just like his writing, Daufuskie resident and prolific author Roger Pinckney is succinct and entertaining. His voice is in cadence and in keeping with his salty, southern upbringing, drawing out some syllables, omitting others and always reflective of his hard-won wit and love for the Lowcountry. 

 In a virtual interview with Monthly, Pinckney, a voodoo aficionado (one of his works is, “Got My Mojo Workin’: A Voodoo Memoir”), discussed some of his bestsellers like “Blue Roots” and “Reefer Moon,” his most recently published work “Washed in the Blood” and an upcoming project he is co-writing with Michael Dewitt Jr. about the Murdaugh family and “a culmination of missteps going on for over one hundred years.” 

Changing lives

Seventh-grader Luke Haro helps people around the world

Luke Haro was attending a private online school when he was assigned a project that inspired him to change the lives of people around the world. 

Last school year, the Bluffton boy attended Valor Global Online, a Christian school that focuses on philanthropy and entrepreneurship. In his global impact class, Luke was required to lend $25 to an individual through a nonprofit organization called Kiva and to create a video asking others to do the same. 

Luke decided to go way above and beyond what his teacher required of him. He spent his entire spring break building a website and setting up a GoFundMe page to raise more money so he could give out loans to more people.

Encouraging acceptance

High school senior Sidney Wilson pens book to inspire other kids

On the cusp of graduating from high school, Sidney Wilson is at an age typically marked by a desire to fit in — to conform. But that’s not Sidney. She’s embraced what makes her different and has written a children’s book encouraging others to do the same.

“My book is supposed to teach children that it is good to be different from one another and to accept children that are different from them,” Sidney said.

Tennis teacher

Endless energy of Alfredo Soliz helps top junior players maximize potential

Alfredo Soliz followed his tennis dreams everywhere they took him, from his native Bolivia throughout South America and across the pond to Europe. 

And when his dream reached its ceiling, he came to Hilton Head Island and started a new one.

For more than 30 years, Soliz has used the skills and lessons his own tennis journey instilled combined with his relentlessly positive attitude and energy to help top junior players reach even greater heights on the court than he did representing the Bolivian national team as a teenager — and it all started here on Hilton Head.