Sullivan's Island Magazine Summer/Fall 2018

14 www.SullivansIslandMagazine.com | www.SullivansIslandHomes.com [ We Were Sullivan’s Island ] The McCulloughs ran the restaurant and an amusement center called the Breakers, complete with a soda fountain, dance hall and bowling alley. They then bought the Atlantic Hotel, where Brown served as the chief cook and ran a staff of five helpers. “They used to have an orchestra there and it had horns and drums. The young people would dance the waltz there and the Charleston. We would go outside and look up there and they would be waltzing. Oh, what a lovely time they used to have over here,” she said. The Atlantic Hotel burned down in 1925 and was never rebuilt. WILLIAM R.WILHAUER Wilhauer first came to the Lowcountry in 1914 with the National Guard and spent his years during World War I at Fort Moultrie. His job as the head of the fort’s intelligence corps put him in some interesting and often lifesaving positions. Wilhauer remembers the flu epidemic of 1918 being terrible, with two or three funerals each day. He noticed during the epidemic that a load of beautiful apples had been delivered to the fort. Men were eating a lot of them, and there were bushels in all of the barracks, but no one knew where they came from. Wilhauer became suspicious and had some of the apples checked – they had been injected with flu germs. He was never able to find out where the apples came from or how many men contracted the flu by eating them. He recalled another time following a doctor who suspiciously left his post with two large packages. He secretly inspected the packages after they were dropped off at the post office and discovered that what seemed to be just a shipment of pillows had codeine hidden inside. His find led FBI agents to breaking up a drug ring supplied by medical personnel from 29 forts. Through his career, he also discovered a spy on the trolley and prevented a plan to blow up some of Charleston’s docks. Wilhauer left the island after World War I but returned for good in 1951. “I’ve watched a narrow road grow into a boulevard (Coleman Boulevard) and a sleepy community grow into a thriving town,” he recalled.