Hilton Head’s St. Patrick’s Day parade grand marshal is local - and that’s what matters | Opinion
Monty Jett didn’t have to prove he’s Irish.
Yet he’ll be the grand marshal of Hilton Head Island’s 39th St. Patrick’s Day Parade at 2 p.m. on Sunday. And that’s a good thing.
We’re not as stuffy about our bona fides as they are with the St. Patrick’s parade down the shoreline in our suburb — Savannah. You’ll never see Savannah turn Gaelic into Gullah like we did when Emory Campbell was our grand marshal in 2018.
Last year’s island grand marshal was tennis champion Stan Smith, who may not be Irish but he can get green tennis shoes sent to him with the snap of o’finger.
When I was grand marshal in 2019, no one asked about my pedigree, even though my folks sailed into Charleston from Belfast in 1817. And in February 1865 when U.S. Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman destroyed their hometown of Winnsboro, S.C., burning and looting my great-great-grandparents’ store and attached home, Mrs. Lauderdale “got her Irish up,” seized a tobacco box and came down with all her might with it on the head of one of Sherman’s marauders robbing her of her hard-earned goods.
That’s enough Irishness to cover all of us for a good while.
But who needs it, really?
Monty Jett, the voice of Hilton Head since he took his first radio disc-jockey gig here in 1988, is from right up the road — Denmark, S.C., population 3,538.
As a 15-year-old, he was blasting his “Monty Jett and the Jet Set” rock ‘n’ roll show over the 1,000-watt 790 AM in Denmark — “The Mighty 790, the Voice of Choice in the Lowcountry.” As he said the name of his show, jet plane sounds would roar through the background over WWBD, which stood for “Welcome to Bamberg and Denmark.”
He’s local, and he knows it, and he’s proud of it, and it has worked so well that in retirement he still has a show on Rewind 107.9 from 6 to 10 a.m. on Saturdays.
His wife, Ginnie Lee Jett, does her “Beatle Bits” and Capt. Fuzzy Davis’ son Capt. Drew Davis now does the fishing forecast and Tom Kinder does sports.
Monty and Ginnie Lee used to do a beach-music show together called “Boogie on the Beach,” and “Married with Microphones.” They never changed that name, even when they broadcast together while they were divorced for 10 years before remarrying.
“Radio is local,” Monty says. “The only way you’re going to win is to remain local.”
That wasn’t hard in Denmark, where everyone knew everyone, and always waved. His kindergarten class graduated from Denmark-Olar High School with him.
He once told on the air the plight of a bedridden woman who changed channels on her television with a cane fishing pole. And the pole broke. “It wasn’t long before she had a new TV with remote,” Monty said.
That would be the start of something big. By now, he has lent his voice to countless nonprofits in raising millions for charity.
He has outlived and out-maneuvered a number of fads, trends and prophets of doom.
“Everyone said the 8-track tape player was going to kill radio,” he said. “Then they said the cassette tape player would kill radio.” That didn’t happen. And neither have streaming services like Spotify killed it, Monty said.
For him, the key is to resist trying to be something you’re not, and that’s something his hometown needs to remember.
It’s true that the Hilton Head he will wave to from a special carriage during Sunday’s parade is a much different version of the Lowcountry than the one that reared him 100 miles north. Here he has found “people from all over, from all walks of life, all levels of accomplishment, rubbing elbows.” And he found that “everybody had this common thread: Love of the island, and wanting to make it special and keep it special.”
He may not be as popular in the parade as the Budweiser Clydesdales, or maybe even the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. But he’s local. He’s us, and proud of it.
And, in case Savannah is watching, his mother was an O’Quinn.
David Lauderdale can be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.
