Tranquil beaches AND activities galore draw some folks back year after year after year
By LAURA SCHOLZ
For many, Jekyll Island isn’t just a one-off vacation spot but a home away from home, a place to celebrate milestones, enjoy nature, and unwind from city life amid the backdrop of beautiful coastal landscapes and pristine beaches. From their must-visit local haunts to favorite memories, these repeat visitors share why they keep returning to the island.
Sandra Martin Mungin’s parents, Genoa and Mamie Martin, were Jekyll Island pioneers. In 1963, they became the first Black residents of the island, building a home on the south side in the St. Andrews community near what was at the time the state’s first and only beach open to African-Americans.
While Mungin was already in college by the time her parents moved to the island, she visited as often as she could. “We went crabbing and fishing and swimming and had crab boils and barbecues,” she remembers.
“They were very busy and hard-working,” she says of her parents. Her mother was a nurse, while her father managed Selden Park in nearby Brunswick and worked as a concert promoter for Jekyll’s famed Dolphin Club Lounge, where he booked acts like Otis Redding.
The family often hosted friends and relatives from Atlanta. “You have no problem with folks wanting to come visit if you live on the beach,” she says with a laugh. For years, three generations of the family participated in Jekyll’s annual Thanksgiving Golf Classic, often gathering afterward for a meal on the family’s porch.
These and other stories from Mungin’s life are part of an oral history collection at Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum.
Now 78 years old, Mungin recently moved back to the area after 40 years in Atlanta.
“I missed the salt air and got tired of traffic,” she says. She loves visiting Driftwood Beach and the old picnic area and having a place where her grandson Miles—who lives overseas with Mungin’s son and daughter-in-law—can dip his toes in the sand and go fishing from the same piers she did as a child.
Of Jekyll, she says, “it’s a very beautiful place, and it’s home.”
A first responder from McDonough, Jeff Foster has been vacationing on Jekyll Island for his entire life. He’s written a book about it: “Sandy Britches and Sandy Toes: My Jekyll Island Memories.”
Drawn to its serene setting and laid-back atmosphere, Foster and his parents started visiting Jekyll in the mid-1960s, staying at, among other places, the Cherokee Campground and later The Wanderer Resort Motel.
“I loved that it was so peaceful and quiet, not packed like the beaches in Florida,” recalls Foster.
He spent his summer vacations strolling the beaches at the old northside picnic area and on St. Andrews, or shopping for souvenirs at Whittle’s Gifts and his favorite spot, Jekyll Pharmacy.
“The AC was always ice-cold, and when you walked in, you were immediately hit by the smell of plastic and the sight of colorful vinyl toys, beach floats, T-shirts, and shells,” he says.
Over the past five decades, he has collected more than 200 Jekyll Island postcards, brochures, restaurant menus, bumper stickers, and other memorabilia, much of which he recently donated to Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum.
“It’s my contribution to the Jekyll story,” he explains.
These days, he visits Jekyll at least one a year, taking the same back roads his family used to travel when he was a child.
“Getting down there is almost half the fun,” says Foster, who can rattle off the name of every small town between his metro Atlanta home and the island. He even drove eight hours round trip to celebrate his 50th birthday on the island.
When on island, he rarely deviates from his set routine: soaking in the views on the riverbanks near DuBignon Cemetery or Driftwood Beach, eating homemade peanut butter pie at Zachary’s Riverhouse, and shopping for souvenirs at Maxwell’s.
“Every time you cross that bridge, you enter a time warp into another era, where everyone talks to everybody and complete strangers feel like people you’ve known for years,” he says. “It always makes me feel like a kid again.”
When Cathie and Tom Wilson were married in 1970, they honeymooned on Jekyll Island. Why? When he first visited Jekyll as a teenager in the early 1960s, Tom saw a happy young couple sitting in a fancy sports car and overheard the woman say, “This has been a fantastic honeymoon,” Tom says now.
“That planted the idea in my mind that if I ever got married or had a honeymoon, that is where I would go.” He stuck to his plan.
Tom and Cathie spent their four-day honeymoon on Jekyll during his graduate school spring break in 1970. They stayed at The Wanderer Resort Motel and Stuckey’s Carriage Inn, and Cathie fondly recalls riding a bicycle built for two all around the island.
The two of them have returned to celebrate their anniversary every year since.
“It’s almost like stepping back in time,” says Cathie of the island’s tranquil atmosphere.
When Cathie and Tom Wilson were married in 1970, they honeymooned on Jekyll Island. Why? When he first visited Jekyll as a teenager in the early 1960s, Tom saw a happy young couple sitting in a fancy sports car and overheard the woman say, “This has been a fantastic honeymoon,” Tom says now.
“That planted the idea in my mind that if I ever got married or had a honeymoon, Jekyll is where I would go.” He stuck to his plan.
Tom and Cathie spent their four-day honeymoon on Jekyll during his graduate school spring break in 1970. They stayed at The Wanderer Resort Motel and Stuckey’s Carriage Inn, and Cathie fondly recalls riding a bicycle built for two all around the island.
The two of them have returned to celebrate their anniversary every year since.
“It’s almost like stepping back in time,” says Cathie of the island’s tranquil atmosphere.
“It’s a sanctuary, and we love all the trees, the relative lack of development, and that it’s not really crowded on the beach,” he explains.
Over the years, the couple has celebrated many milestones on Jekyll Island: family vacations with their children and grandchildren, Tom’s 60th birthday, and their 50th wedding anniversary, which they commemorated with photographs under the island’s signature oak trees and a stay at the Jekyll Island Club Resort.
The pair visits every October and usually stay in the Historic District, often running into the same couples year after year at their favorite spots, including The Wharf restaurant and The Bar at the Jekyll Island Club Resort.
“We like to get to know the bartenders and staff and customers,” says Tom.
As Cathie explains, “Everytime we go, it feels like our family away from home.”
Iris Harris’s Jekyll Island roots run deep. Her father, George Harris, was Glynn County’s recreation director in the 1950s and 1960s and helped design many of the island’s first parks. Her mother, Joyce Harris, worked at The Wanderer Resort Motel for more than 30 years.
“My friends and I would take over the pool and the beach there, then would ride our bicycles all over the island, back before there were many cars,” she says. That same group of friends enjoyed playing miniature golf at Peppermint Land amusement park, while she and her family picnicked on the beach on Sundays during the warmer months.
“We also spent a lot of time at the Jekyll Island Pharmacy at the old shopping center because my mama and daddy were friends with the owner, and he would buy us hamburgers and Cokes at the counter,” Harris says.
While Harris left Jekyll after graduating high school in 1966, she returns at least once a year, sometimes solo and at times with family or friends. “I did think it was pretty awesome then, which is why I wanted to go back some day,” she explains.
Harris always eats fresh seafood and visits her favorite Jekyll spots, where she enjoys reading books and people watching, often with her childhood friend, Mary Brandenberg.
“We always take turns picking where to go for our vacation,” Harris says, “but usually one of us says, ‘Do you want to just go down to the island?'”
