Terry College of Business - Fall 2008 - (Page 23) Brumley calls the family cemetery on Wadmalaw Island a prayer garden. His mother and father are buried there, along with ashes from his older brother George and his family — 12 of whom died in a tragic plane crash in kenya five years ago. decided to sell Daniel Island outright, so Brumley and Matt Sloan got together with Frank’s older brother George, by now a noted neonatal physician who headed the pediatrics unit at Emory University Hospital. George, in addition to inventing life-saving techniques in childhood medical care, had prospered financially, and George’s brother-in-law, Fred Stanback, had a close friend named Warren Buffett. The Stanback family had made serious money with its famous headache powders (“Snap back … with Stanback!”), then reinvested its earnings in Buffett’s young company, Berkshire Hathaway. So it was that the Brumley brothers and a few other investment partners began the ultimate development project of their lives, creating a community on a spoil island and marshland just over the water from Charleston. When the Brumleys bought it for just $12 million in 1997, the island was deserted except for the remains of seven truck farms. In the fullness of his powers, Brumley now knew how to bait a hook, too. To foster the idea of community, the Brumleys donated land to churches and schools, and set aside hundreds of acres for parks. They worked out deals with Charleston to be annexed into the city, in return for police, fire, and sanitation services. They found a corporate anchor, then banks followed. They brought in the Family Circle Tennis Tournament, and they built one of the finest tennis facilities in the nation. They added homes in phases, a neighborhood at a time, some million-dollar mansions, some middle-class homes, some affordable housing. They brought in partners to manage various profit centers outside their own expertise. To avoid debt, Brumley brought in the Crow family from Texas as his joint venture partners in the golf and residential segments of the island. It’s a success story, but now one that’s bittersweet. Brumley’s brother George and 11 other members of the Brumley family lost their lives in a smallplane crash in Kenya five years ago. “I think about them every day,” Brumley says. That mind-numbing tragedy is the reason Brumley started his most beloved development, a small one and maybe his last, at his favorite place on earth. Frank Brumley calls it a prayer garden. His mother and father lie here, under the shade of great trees. Half the ashes from George’s family lie here. A chest-high wall of 200-year-old brick salvaged from a river surrounds their gravestones, these made of gleaming white Georgia marble. Brumley and his beautiful Blanche will lie here one day too, in the soft shadows of this private family cemetery. Five hundred wild acres on Wadmalaw Island is Frank Brumley’s place of peace. He comes here at least once a week. After his dad died in 1989, he came almost every day, and on the trip from Charleston, he would talk with his mother the entire 45-minute drive. “Mom said she got lonely about the time Dad used to get home from work,” Brumley explains. “It did us both good to talk.” The plantation is a retreat, but it takes a lot of work. Brumley drives his own tractor and keeps the fences up. He and Blanche recently placed a conservation easement with the Lowcountry Open Land Trust that will prevent this land from ever being developed. Brumley cherishes a new role in his life. He’s become a surrogate grandfather to 10 remaining grandchildren in George’s family. Add in eight grandchildren of his own, and you can understand why he’s built a family compound that sleeps 32. He recently added a new outdoor pavilion with state-of-the-art sound, and a new bunkhouse waits for bedtime ghost stories and the laughter of children. An estuary with a priestly blue heron flanks the main house, and banana spiders as big as a man’s hand hang over the flowerbeds. Out the windows, past a billion shining bayonets of spartina, sparkles the sea. Blackbeard and other pirates once sailed just there. Confederate blockade runners and grim slave ships passed too, not so long ago. It’s a place to consider history. How nothing stays the same. But some places on the Brumley place feel a thousand years old. Long-leaf pines whisper in the breezes. Elephantine oaks grow too thick to reach around, their heights cloudy with Spanish moss. On a long lone road, Gullah islanders watch cars pass. Frank Brumley has learned a great deal about development in his amazing career. Luckily, he has learned when to let things stand still, too. ■ When the Brumleys bought Daniel Island for just $12 million in 19 97, it was deserted except for the remains of seven truck farms. When complete, the 4,000-acre development will be home to 7,000 residences, 18,000 people, two designer golf courses, and 2.3 million square feet of off ice and commercial space. Terry College oF Business Fall 2008 • 23 William StrUHS Wadmalaw Island, place of peace
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