Sunday Shots: The Plumèd Lions

Mia,

Years ago, Daddy took Mommy to Jekyll Island; site of Daddy's family vacation spot every year when he was growing up. Jekyll Island is the southernmost inhabited island of the several that form the Golden Isles off the coast of Georgia. There is one farther south, Cumberland, but now that is owned nearly in its entirety by the Department of the Interior as Cumberland Island National Seashore. From the turn of the 20th century through the 1920s, Jekyll Island was the playplace of millionaires. The families who summered in Newport got in their yachts every autumn to sail to Georgia and winter on the golden coast. Here you could walk the streets and find a veritable "Who's Who" of all of the famous names in our society at that time: Morgans, Goodyears, Disneys, Fords, and Rockefellers. The only ones missing were the Carnegies, who owned Cumberland Island in its entirety and lived on Dungeness Plantation there.

Three things sounded the death knell of the exclusive millionaires resort on Jekyll Island; the progressive income tax, the Great Depression, and finally by the early 1940s the German U-Boat threat made yachting from Rhode Island to Georgia inadvisable. After closing for the summer in spring 1942, the club did not reopen. From the early 1940s to the early 1980s, the club slowly disintegrated. Slowly the main clubhouse was restored, and is open for guests today as the Jekyll Island Club.

All of the houses are slowly being restored and turned into guests' quarters at the inn, though some were completely destroyed by the elements and are being allowed to regrow into the forest in order to provide some privacy between the mansions still standing. I saw this, of a pair of two lions formerly marking the entrance to the Disney mansion and thought of the lines from Chesterton's masterpiece of the English language, Lepanto:

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of Saint Mark.

The palmetto bush is slowly overgrowing the statuette. Maybe when you come back in 30 years, it will have been consumed by the forest growth. Behind the lion you can see the line of tall grass grown up around the tabby formation of the house's foundation, now all but destroyed.


I hope that, in your life, you build things and a reputation that will last. I hope that, as the Ten Commandments say, "your name will be long in the land the Lord your God has given you." Remember that a good name is rather to be had than all riches, honor, and glory. I wonder what it will be like to be your Dad for a long, long time. I hope that you chase your dreams and make an impact on our world.

Three months from yesterday is your due date. I'm 2/3 of the way to meeting you.

Daddy