[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 23879-23880]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        IN MEMORY OF JOHN CURRY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE WILSON

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 2, 2008

  Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Madam Speaker, I am grateful to submit 
the following thoughtful memorial that ran in the Island Packet in 
Hilton Head Island, SC, remembering the life and service of John Curry. 
John was a dear friend and a lifelong leader in his community.

                [From the Island Packet, Sept. 28, 2008]

        A Look at the Life of Island Tourism Champion John Curry

                 (By Janet Smith and David Lauderdale)

       For 35 years, John Curry had a singular impact on the 
     development of Hilton Head Island's tourism industry and the 
     island's place in the world.
       That impact came in a determined pursuit to keep Hilton 
     Head viable, even through the toughest of economic times, and 
     to maintain what drew millions of visitors and the island's 
     nearly 40,000 permanent residents here in the first place.
       Curry, 78, died Friday night at Hilton Head Hospital after 
     suffering a brain aneurysm during lunch with his wife, 
     Valerie, and friends at the Hilton Head Yacht Club.
       Only the late Charles Fraser, who carved a new community 
     out of the forests of Sea Pines and set the stage for future 
     planned communities, did more to shape the island's modern 
     development. But Curry, who came to Hilton Head to work for 
     Fraser in 1973 as executive vice president of the old Sea 
     Pines Co., dealt with the nuts and bolts of legislation, 
     incorporation and operations that ultimately shaped Hilton 
     Head as a resort destination and residential community. In 
     the process, he shaped tourism statewide.
       Along the way, he played a critical role in creating the 
     Town of Hilton Head Island and establishing the island as a 
     year-round resort community. He also helped negotiate and get 
     through the legislature the state accommodations tax, which 
     has provided millions of dollars in marketing money for the

[[Page 23880]]

     local tourism industry, as well as funding for arts and 
     cultural groups here.


                          CENTER OF THE STORM

       Curry's work was not without controversy. He often was 
     caught up in the clash of competing tourism and residential 
     interests and served as a lightning rod for those who thought 
     the island was changing for the worse. As the tourism 
     industry's most visible spokesman, he took the heat for the 
     industry, accused of putting self-interest over community 
     interests.
       He played that same lightning rod role at the Hilton Head 
     Island Airport, serving on the Beaufort County Aviation 
     Advisory Board for many years.
       Native islander Perry White said he and Curry agreed on 
     little, if anything, in 35 years of tangling on issues from 
     incorporation of the island to expansion of the airport.
       But White said their disagreements were never personal. 
     They even swapped stories about lessons learned from their 
     grandfathers.
       ``I had tremendous respect for John, and I think he had 
     respect for me,'' White said. ``John's contributions were 
     tremendous. I'll miss John. He was one of the mediating 
     forces on the Airport Advisory Board, and with all the 
     firebrands coming on now, I'm beginning to appreciate that 
     more.''
       The last time the two saw each other was at a recent 
     Beaufort County Council committee meeting. Curry handed White 
     a copy of a proposed charter change to the airport advisory 
     board.


                          BACK FROM THE BRINK

       One of Curry's toughest business challenges came in 
     November 1986, when he was tapped to run Hilton Head's 
     largest employer as it plunged into bankruptcy.
       Curry was named trustee for Hilton Head Holdings Corp., a 
     company that had been cobbled together from the assets of two 
     longtime island companies--the Sea Pines Co. and the Hilton 
     Head Co.--less than two years before. The company owned 
     property and business operations in Sea Pines, Shipyard, 
     Wexford, Port Royal and Indigo Run. Its collapse directly 
     affected a third of the island, but the entire community 
     reeled from the blow.
       The company was in debt to the tune of $100 million, 90 
     percent of that in real estate mortgages. But more than 2,000 
     creditors, many of them local businesses, were owed $10 
     million.
       The bankruptcy threatened not only individual livelihoods, 
     but the reputation of Hilton Head as a first-class resort and 
     the future of the island's premier sporting event, the 
     Heritage Classic professional golf tournament. National media 
     swarmed to Hilton Head to cover the story of a premier resort 
     falling into disrepute.
       The island company had been wrested from developer Bobby 
     Ginn earlier in 1986 and put in the hands of a New York 
     businessman, Philip Schwab. But Schwab's financial empire 
     collapsed, along with the savings and loan industry, pulling 
     down the Hilton Head properties.
       Schwab was supposed to prop up the failing island company. 
     Instead, he started pulling money out of Hilton Head. Schwab 
     said that his net worth at the time he took control of the 
     company was $50 million to $60 million; he estimated in 1987 
     that he owed $500 million.
       When asked in October 1987 what he had told people he would 
     do to save the company, Schwab replied, ``Nobody ever asked 
     me.''
       U.S. District Judge Sol Blatt Jr., who appointed Curry as 
     trustee, and former S.C. Gov. John West succeeded in getting 
     the South Carolina properties separated from the rest of 
     Schwab's holdings. Blatt took the rare step of holding on to 
     the bankruptcy case rather than turn it over to a U.S. 
     Bankruptcy Court judge. Blatt for many years owned a house in 
     Palmetto Dunes and was a longtime friend of West.
       Blatt, West and Curry had no bankruptcy experience. (At one 
     of the first hearings in the case, Blatt described himself 
     and West as ``the blind leading the blind.'') Curry's resort 
     operations experience brought him to the table.
       The challenge was to balance what they thought was right 
     for Hilton Head with the pressures to sell the company's 
     assets for the most money possible to pay off creditors. 
     Those competing interests made for fiery court hearings, and 
     it eventually resulted in Blatt's removal from the case by 
     the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court said Blatt's 
     Hilton Head ties had created at least the appearance of a 
     conflict of interest.
       Blatt's activism was extremely unusual, but the fear of 
     lasting repercussions for Hilton Head was palpable. In 
     January 1987, Blatt said, ``I'm not going to supervise the 
     demise of Hilton Head Island when I can stop it.''
       Throughout 1987, Curry and his team struggled to keep 
     resort and real estate operations going while figuring out 
     how to keep the gated communities caught in the bankruptcy as 
     intact as possible.


                          KEEPING THE HERITAGE

       Saving the Heritage also was a primary goal. The PGA Tour 
     was unhappy with the condition of Harbour Town Golf Links, 
     where the Heritage was played. The course had been neglected 
     as the Sea Pines Co.'s fortunes sank. Making matters worse 
     was that the purse check for another Tour event held at 
     Harbour Town in the fall of 1986 had bounced.
       Curry flew to Jacksonville, Fla., to meet with the PGA Tour 
     commissioner. When told the only way to keep the Heritage was 
     to sell Harbour Town Golf Links to the Tour, Curry got up and 
     walked out. It worked.
       The tournament stayed, and Curry then leaned on Angus 
     Cotton, who had moved to the island in 1981 as general 
     manager of the Marriott resort hotel in Shipyard, to produce 
     a $1 million letter of credit from local businesses to 
     guarantee the purse for the 1987 tournament. To do it, they 
     formed the nonprofit Heritage Classic Foundation to stage the 
     tournament. To date, that group's charitable giving from 
     tournament proceeds has topped $16 million.
       In the end, the bankrupt company's Sea Pines assets went to 
     residents of that community who put together their own 
     company, Sea Pines Associates. Most of the other properties 
     went back to mortgage holder Marathon Oil Co. Indigo Run 
     ended up in the hands of the Federal Resolution Trust Corp. 
     and was sold to the Melrose Co. in 1991.
       After getting baptized in the arcane world of bankruptcy 
     law, Curry continued to work as a trustee in many other 
     cases.


                            `HEADS IN BEDS'

       But Curry's most enduring legacy will be his work in 
     tourism.
       ``Before John, we had tourism but it was almost always 
     linked to selling real estate,'' Cotton said. ``He was 
     interested in putting heads in beds and pushing tourism in 
     the off-peak months.''
       Curry and Cotton took countless trips to cold cities, 
     pitching the island and offering tourism leaders there free 
     stays back on Hilton Head.
       Friends say that no matter where Curry went around the 
     world, he always seemed to know people.
       Cotton and others worked with Curry to shape the state 
     Accommodations Tax Act in 1984. With assurances that part of 
     the 2 percent tax on overnight lodging would go to local 
     tourism marketing and to local organizations to promote 
     tourism, Curry helped sell it to skeptical industry leaders 
     statewide.
       Curry, who led the island's Visitor and Convention Bureau 
     for 17 years, also pushed legislation to relax state liquor 
     laws and allow Sunday sales.
       ``He was very pragmatic,'' Cotton said, ``very pragmatic. 
     In the arts and education and a lot of other ways people 
     didn't see, he was behind the scenes trying to smooth the way 
     and work things out.''


                              FLYING HIGH

       To understand Curry's involvement with the airport, one 
     first must understand his passion for flying, said David 
     Ames, chairman of county Aviation Advisory Board and a close 
     friend of Curry's. They shared office space for 20 years.
       ``I think he was happiest in the air,'' Ames said. ``He 
     just loved the adventure and the freedom flying gave him.''
       As a tourism leader, Curry also understood how important 
     the airport is to the economy and the island experience, Ames 
     said.
       ``John believed the airport provided an essential support 
     for the standard of life on the island,'' he said. ``The 
     convenience of the island airport is tremendously important, 
     and John knew that. And coming from the service business, he 
     knew it was important how a passenger feels about Hilton Head 
     when getting off that airplane. He was always looking for 
     ways to make the airport better, and he spent whatever time 
     it took.''
       Bill Miles, president and CEO of the Hilton Head Island-
     Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, said, ``The Hilton Head Island 
     we know today is in part due to the tireless efforts of John, 
     with his wonderful obsession to get it right and make this 
     the unique destination it has become. He created a lasting 
     legacy for us all, with courage, true grit, determination and 
     with a real grace and style that was all his own.''
       In memory of John Curry.
       A memorial service for John Curry, 78, is at 2 p.m. Monday 
     at First Presbyterian Church, 540 William Hilton Parkway.
       Surviving are his wife of 36 years, Valerie; three sons, 
     David (Rozana) Curry of Burbank, Calif., Edward (Kelly) Curry 
     of Toluca Lake, Calif., and Donn Curry of Portland, Ore.; two 
     grandchildren, Matthew and Adam Curry; a brother, David Curry 
     of Berkeley, Calif.; and a former daughter-in-law, Lynn 
     Curry. He was preceded in death by his twin sister, Jeanette; 
     and his first wife, Martha Weathersbee Curry.

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