Thunderbolt

By Amy Reynolds

According to Native American legend, the name Thunderbolt comes from a great storm in which “a thunderbolt from the heavens opened up a spring of fresh water and the place long afterwards smelled of the bolt.”

Today, the spring is gone, but the river and the light scent of salt marsh remains in a town with a rich history dating back prior to English colonization. Through its days as a Native American settlement, then as an English farming community and defensive position guarding Savannah against the approach of the Spanish from the south, to the plantation days, and later, in the mid-20th century, as the hub of the fishing industry of coastal Georgia, the river has been the lifeblood flowing through the heart of Thunderbolt.

In it’s heyday, in the late 40s, 50s and 60s, shrimp boats lined the banks of the Wilmington River and the fishing village of Thunderbolt thrived. A race track ran round the town, a casino stood at one end and a cemetery at the other, with markets, eateries, barber shops, juke joints, and of course, the docks, in between. Georgia State Industrial College, now Savannah State University, was an important keystone on the southeastern edge of the community. A street car transported people to and from Savannah, the oyster shell roads lent a strong aroma to the air, and the annual Blessing of the Fleet was one of the areas biggest events.

Today, condos have replaced most of the shrimp docks, but Thunderbolt continues to thrive and the river continues to play a central role. With four marinas along the river and numerous marine businesses in town, it remains a central boating hub in the greater Savannah area. River Drive is still the main thoroughfare and is still home to the Thunderbolt Town Hall, as well as two restaurants, gift shops, lovely Thomson park with a pier, and roadside benches for resting and admiring the view over the river. The huge old oaks that stood in the center of the street “back in the day” remain, and now frame a large mahogany cross with the inscription, “This Monument is Dedicated to All Who Toil From the Sea.”

A short walk from River Drive will take you to the Thunderbolt Museum, on Mechanics Avenue, where bits and pieces of the town’s history, much of which has been donated by residents, are preserved. The Museum Society, as well as the town council and volunteers from the community frequently hold fundraisers to ensure the museums continuation, including the “Taste of Thunderbolt” held every May in the street and parking lots surrounding the museum. The town’s restaurants and seafood distributors offer food, while artists and crafters set up booth’s offering their creations.

Thunderbolt Mayor, Anna Maria Thomas, who’s family has roots in the area, works to spread the word about the town and all it has to offer. “It’s a small community and residents want to see it prosper,” she says. “I’m trying to promote Thunderbolt and its businesses to help make that happen.”
Patty Champagne, a newer resident and owner of Curiosities, selling “Antiques & Stuff,” loves the town and also wants to get the word out. She’s working together with the town council toward getting a sign erected at the corner of Victory and River Drive to alert people passing by about the great things River Drive has to offer. “I want to bring recognition to historic and business district of Thunderbolt,” she says, “I think it locals and tourists alike just drive right past without even realizing what’s here.”
Whether your interest is in history, boating, or just a great meal and a nice walk along the river, Thunderbolt is sure to delight you, so go by boat or by car and see what this little town has to offer.

Charlie Teeple recalls the fishing village of his youth.

“The shrimp boats would go out at four o’clock on a Monday morning and they’d come back up the river at four in the afternoon on Friday. I had a bar … they’d see who could get to Charlie’s first!”
Times were far simpler then. “I never had a house key,” Charlie recalls. “You never locked the doors.” While larger crimes, when they occurred, where handled in the county, if you committed a misdemeanor crime, you had to go to Mayor’s Court. Held every Sunday morning at the jailhouse on the bluff, the town mayor would hear your crime and charge you a fine. The usual crime? Drinking. The fine? “$5.00. Come back next week and have a good time!” the mayor would say. Charlie laughs, “Anything you did, the fine was usually $5.00.”

Entertainment was a bit different then than now as well. While many people listened to stories on the radio, prior to TVs being in every home people looked to the community and found entertainment and social events through local churches and clubs. One such event was wildly unique and unusual: The Womanless Wedding. A group of women from one of the area churches orchestrated a play in which the only scene was a full scale wedding, but all of the characters were men.
“The bride was the police chief, Billy Leonard. Five foot ten, weighed in excess of 300 pounds – he was a pretty thing, but hairy – they put him in this skimpy little dress. They found the skinniest little guy you could imagine to be the groom. I was on crutches, so I was the great grandmother, wore a dress, had 40 inch boobs out to here [he gestures]. There was an illegitimate baby. They built a crib for him. He must have weighed 400 pounds. They set the whole thing up in a field, even brought a piano out from the church. The audience sat on two sides just like in a church. That was the funniest thing!”

Charlie’s great grandfather, Israel Elmgren, was a boat builder with his boatyard across from where the town hall is today. During prohibition the boatyard made a good living building “rum runners,” boats that could go faster than the Coast Guard. “They’d go offshore and meet freighters coming up from Cuba to get rum. My family wasn’t involved, we just build the boats, but there were some very prominent people involved!”
After Israel passed away, his son, Balder, continued the business. When Charlie’s father, Charlie Senior, graduated from college, jobs were scarce so he went to work in the boatyard for his father-in-law making $13 a week. It was hard work and eight hour days weren’t the norm then. “You worked until you were told to pick up your tools. And you weren’t late to work in the mornings. If you were late, there were five people standing outside waiting to take your job.”

Made up of mostly German, Dutch and Portuguese families from early on, the river tied everyone together. “People may fight like tooth and nail with each other, but when it was needed, everyone came together, stood together.”

Myrtice Lewis – The campus was our playground.

Thunderbolt native Mrs. Myrtice Lewis grew up a few blocks away outside the entrance to Georgia State Industrial College (now SSU). The campus played a huge role in the community and in the lives of her family.

Her father, Benjamin Joseph “B.J.” James, and her mother, Nianza “Ni” Freeman James, both attended the school. B.J. worked his way through college delivering newspapers, selling sandwiches at ball games, and even working as a butler for the Armstrong family at their summer home in North Carolina. Although he graduated with a degree in agriculture, he chose to continue the successful grocery business he began while still a student.

“Daddy’s never spent the first $25 he ever made. His motto was, ‘The world belongs to those who work,’ and he worked hard.”
B.J. and Ni raised their two daughters, Myrtice and Annetta, there in Thunderbolt just outside the gates of the campus. “The campus was our playground, we skated up and down the sidewalks and we helped mama and daddy in the store too, making sandwiches or at the cash register.”

“I enjoyed growing up here. It was safe and peaceful, with such a sense of community,” she says, recalling the oyster shell roads, riding her bike along River Drive, and shopping with her mother for seafood or at Brinson’s variety store. She also recalls riding into Savannah with her mother and shopping at the market and along Broughton Street on Saturdays. “After shopping, we’d go into Kress, down to the basement. It was segregated then. But they had the best hot dogs!”

But the river in holds a special place in her heart. “During my early years, there were no baptismal pools in our College Park Baptist Church. In 1943, along with my Sunday School friends, I was baptized in the Thunderbolt River.”

After primary school, Myrtice and her sister were both sent to boarding school in North Carolina. Myrtice graduated at 17 and returned to Thunderbolt to attend college, finishing in three years and taking a job as a teacher. She later married a man in the Air Force and moved with him to his various duty stations around the country, always working as a teacher, until his retirement and their return to Thunderbolt to raise their two daughters, Tamara and Tonya. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but Thunderbolt.” This from a woman who’s lived all over the country and traveled extensively including visits to South Africa, France and Italy.

And the community is lucky to have her. In addition to volunteering at the museum and contributing to fundraisers, Myrtice, along with other neighbors and friends, helped revitalize the Thunderbolt Community Improvement Association, the same organization her father was a founding member of many years earlier. The Association’s motto is “Strength through unity,” and is still active today, hosting regular clean-ups in the town and its parks, as well as town hall meetings with local candidates running for political office, providing Christmas dinner for town employees, and other civic functions.
Myrtice still enjoys walking along the bluff on River Drive and enjoying the view, though she confesses, “Thunderbolt is no longer my fishing village…I miss it terribly.”

Two faces of the community

In the 50s and 60s when racial tensions were increasing elsewhere, Thunderbolt’s black and white residents alike owned businesses, attended schools, and worked and lived happily in the community. The fishing and shrimping industry in particular was diverse, with some shrimp boat fleets owned by the dock owners or shrimp packing houses and some owned by individuals, both black and white. Out on the water, shrimp boat captains were just men. Black men fished beside white men and sat beside them in Charlie Teeple’s bar as well. “That segregation bit was up on the hill, not down on the water. The water doesn’t see color,” Charlie says.
“That’s a beautiful way to put it,” says Myrtice Lewis, nodding her head and smiling. “There’s a sense of community here and there always has been. It’s always felt like one big family.