Since this is Mount Pleasant Magazine’s Best Of Edition, I’d like to add a few things that weren’t up for a vote but which I think also represent the best of Mount Pleasant (these are not ranked in order).
LOCALLY CAUGHT SEAFOOD
The cover photo of this edition speaks to the popularity of our locally caught seafood. This eye-catching photo elicits the flavor, the culture, the history and the mystique of our Shem Creek fishing and shrimping fleet and its bounty. The flourishing restaurants lining the creek are a testimony to the demand for fresh, local seafood, as 
are the local seafood vendors who don’t cook it but sell it to us by the pound. I often say that if we lose the shrimping fleet, Shem Creek would look like any generic marina from Maine to Miami. God bless the fleet! Our shrimpers tell me that due to changes in environmental factors, they now have to go farther away from the mouth of Charleston Harbor to catch shrimp. Conservation of natural resources and limiting development runoff are key to protecting local seafood.
SETTLEMENT COMMUNITIES
Click Map to Enlarge
At a big event recently, I was asked by a new resident about settlement communities and why they exist. They are called settlement communities because they are where formerly enslaved people settled upon leaving their former way of life on local plantations when slavery ended with the Civil War. I view them as living historic monuments representing the often slow, often contentious but inevitably effective American march of freedom and civil rights. Our settlement communities are spread all across east of the Cooper, reminding us of our Gullah-Geechie culture and our ties to the land. The town’s Sweetgrass Overlay Zoning District and our Community Conservation zoning category were passed in order to protect settlement communities for generations to come.
MUNICIPAL ASSOCIATION OF SOUTH CAROLINA ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
This is the most important of my Best Of list items because it involves a life and death issue. Due to our partnership with locally-based nonprofit WakeUp Carolina, founded by Mount Pleasant native Nanci Steadman-Shipman, we were the only municipality in the state to achieve a reduction in opioid-related overdoses — a whopping 40% reduction. The partnership is funded with money from the nationwide opioid settlement and enables our police department to work with WakeUp Carolina on community awareness, prevention and treatment. Since its inception in the wake of the loss of Nanci’s son Creighton to an opioid overdose in 2016, WakeUp Carolina’s message of hope and treatment has reached 1 million people from right here in our community.
NATIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR CENTER FOR LEADERSHIP
Did you watch the Army-Navy game in December? Every year it is one of the highlights of college football and I predict it will become more so in this age of the transfer portal and paid college athletes. A new tradition during Army-Navy week is called “Worthy Rivals,” and emanates from right here in Mount Pleasant. Worthy Rivals is a discussion panel organized by our locally-based National Medal of Honor Center for Leadership in partnership with the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, comprised of Medal of Honor recipients.
The event occurs each year at the location of the Army-Navy game. This year’s event in Washington, D.C., was moderated by NBC News’ Courtney Kube and featured eight-time NFL Super Bowl champion coach and coordinator Bill Belichick; newly-elected U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, who is a West Point alumnus; Vice Admiral Sean Buck, U.S. Navy (Ret), superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy; and primary honorees, Medal of Honor recipients Ed Byers Jr. and Earl Plumlee.
As demonstrated in the Worthy Rivals event, the mission of the National Medal of Honor Center for Leadership is to take the values and principles of the Medal of Honor to all of America and demonstrate how commitment, sacrifice and character affect leadership not just on the battlefield, but in all walks of life. That’s a big reach and a profound effect originating from right here in Mount Pleasant.
By Will Haynie
Mayor of Mount Pleasant
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