Sullivan's Island Winter-Spring 2018-19

23 www.SullivansIslandMagazine.com | www.SullivansIslandHomes.com WILLIAM POZARO Born Dec. 23, 1913 For William Pozaro, life as a boy on Sullivan’s Island was as quintessential as one could imagine, with his days spent fishing, crabbing and oystering from the beaches, gathering vegetables and plums on the “back beach” and picking washtubs full of blackberries for his parents to make table wine. In those days, the street-car line would drop any deliveries to the island at a stop, where the recipient would then come pick it up; he and his friends would jump at the chance to help two of the island’s grocers pick up their goods and bring them to the store in return for a piece of candy or a soft drink. New Year’s Eve was always one of the biggest events, Pozaro recalled. “At midnight, the elders would go out in the yard with their shotguns, and someone at one end of the island would start off with several blasts, and then all the others along the line would continue to relay the blasts until everyone along the line had joined in.” Pozaro later invested in a chemical company that sold out to Terminix. With enough money to live independently, he and his wife moved to Hawaii but returned home after realizing that Hawaii didn’t have as much to offer as Sullivan’s Island. MARY COSTAVIERRA Born 1900 Venezuelan-born and Massachusetts-raised, Mary Costa Vierra moved to Sullivan’s Island at 18 years old when her husband was stationed at Fort Moultrie. Though initially there was not much to do except sew and entertain, she eventually had 11 children, which kept her busy. “No one had much money in those days, and the children often did odd jobs to earn spending money. They would get up early and pick wild blackberries or the plums that grew all over the island and then would take them from house to house and sell them. They would give me the money to keep for their Easter clothes or something,” she said. “We all lived well as far as eating goes, though. There was all the fish and oysters and crabs anyone could want. The children would dig a hole in the yard and put a tin cover over it and make a big meal of roasted oysters,” she remembered, though she had to go to Mount Pleasant and Charleston for vegetables because those didn’t grow well on the island. Taking a series of trolleys and ferries complicated things, so she was thrilled when paved roads and a “very rickety bridge”– basically boards placed over the trolley trestle – to Mount Pleasant were built in the 1930s.