(Charlene Blanton helps Maureen Caggiano pick out where she wants to put linens in her new home.)

By Tim Callahan
Ninety-year-old Tony Caggiano was scheduled to go home soon from the hospital.
He won’t recognize the outside of the home, but he will recognize the inside.
With the help of Caring Transitions, Tony’s wife, Maureen, moved out of their home of 26
years in Live Oak Village and moved into Garden City Manor. With five or six hands on deck, the move took one day and included setting up her possessions in the new home in a layout similar to the old home.
“Moving is very stressful,” said Caring Transition’s Charlene Blanton. “If it is what they want, making a floor plan of the new home like the old one eases the stress and transition.”
And, that is the company’s main goal, reducing stress.
“I had a million questions for them about the move,” Maureen said, “but Charlene just kept saying, ‘Relax, Maureen, we’ll take care of it.’ And they did.”
Caring Transitions can do any of these things – senior moving, downsizing, cleaning and de-cluttering, estate sales, full or partial liquidations – or
it can do all of them.
With a move, Charlene said, “it is not a yahoo move with stuff scattered all over the sidewalk, disrupting the community at all hours. It is a professional and courteous move.”
Maureen said she was no longer able to maintain a three bedroom home, and she was stretched to the limit by medical bills incurred from both her and Tony’s health problems. Still, she needed to pack and move and unpack. She said Caring Transition’s “helped me worry only about Tony. The Blanton’s told me, ‘Let us worry about the
the move.’”
“People are uptight about their stuff,” Charlene said. “Who wouldn’t be? But, at Maureen’s
age most people want less – not more. We can clean out a room in 35-40 minutes. It might
take some people five to six days to do it. I know. As part of the training, we had to
go home and de-clutter one of our own rooms. You agonize over every little thing. Should I
throw this away? Where do I put it now? Do I give it away? We make three piles – family
items, those to sell to cover expenses and those that can be donated.”
Echoing Charlene’s comments, Maureen said as she gets older she is seeing the need for less and less room and less and less stuff. She was worried about her things being handled by others but, she said, the way it was done by Caring Transitions impressed her.
And, if an estate sale is involved, “they are professionally promoted, priced and run,” Charlene said.
The sales are held all day on Fridays and on Saturdays until noon. At one o’clock on Saturday, everything left is half-priced.
Right now, with items marked as donations, Caring Transitions is donating the items to a local Christian church. Both the Blantons are Christians, who see their new business not just as a business but also as a way to help and serve people who are going through some of the tough transitions in life.
A former registered nurse and Brooklyn native, who married an Italian and lived in New Jersey before moving down here in 1986, Maureen Caggiano is going through a tough time, a tough transition. Her and her husband are getting older, getting sick off and on, and finances are getting tight.
But, she is keeping her chin up.
“I think men have a harder time with changes in circumstances than women,” she said. “A ninety year-old man still expects to do what he did when he was 50. I’ve learned you have to accept it. If you don’t, you’re miserable. I mean, what can you do about it anyway?”
However, she said, “once Tony sees the new place, and everything that matters all there and taken care of, he will see it’s alright.”
(Caring Transition’s phone number is 843-516- 1824. It’s web site is: www.caringtransitions.net)

Steve Strickland, Murrells Inlet native and author

By Tim Callahan
A home project for Steve Strickland, a fourth generation Murrells Inlet native, “ballooned”
into the Murrells Inlet History Project.
It is projected to culminate this early summer in a book with 240 pictures and captions, to be published by Arcadia Publishing in Mt. Pleasant. Arcadia has published 7,500 titles since 1993. The “Images of America” series is very popular and has included towns from Maine to California.
Murrells Inlet will soon be added to the list.
After soliciting pictures and the stories behind them for four years, Strickland had more than 1,000 pictures to choose from. He conducted 40 to 50 in-person interviews, he said, and received picture identifications and stories through a MI History Project Facebook group page that grew from a handful to 576 members. He also wrote a detailed introduction, using another local history book on plantations as his source.
“I had no clue where this was going,” Strickland said, smiling as he sat in the conference room of Earthworks, his engineering and design business in Murrells Inlet, founded in 1996.
“It all started in 2008 with my mother, Glenda, giving me a suitcase of pictures of my grandmother’s, many from the 1920’s to 1940’s,” he said. “But, who were all these people? I might as well have been flipping through a magazine. What were the stories behind the pictures?”
He then began thinking of Murrells Inlet itself. How many stories, how many pictures, were going to die out without ever having been told or seen.
“Our history is dying every day, one person at a time,” Strickland said. “What did those people know that we don’t know?”
In 2009, he had a scanning party at Inlet Affairs, who have been very supportive of the project, he said.
“A lot of locals brought pictures,” he said. “We had a great time.”
Another scanning party followed and, last month, he held a preview that was attended by
about 50 people who had added pictures and memories to the project.
He said some stories, from “bootleggers galore and houses of ill repute,” were better kept “off the record.”
Once the book is in his hands, Strickland said, “you will probably find me down on the Marshwalk. I want to get them in people’s hands. It’s our history.”

Sue Sledz
Executive Director
Murrells Inlet 2020

Tim Callahan
Editor/Publisher

Like many people in these sad economic times, Jode Gammon has had to create her own job by starting a business.
But, she is using the bad to create the good, offering to sell clothes on consignment, and show people that they have a way to make money right in their closet.
“Women have no idea what a treasure trove is in their own closet,” she said.
She is also using her business, Castaway’s Consignment & Resale, as a platform. No customer gets out the door without her saying, “Thank you for shopping small.”
After moving from her homestate of New Jersey 11 years ago, Gammon said she wants to give back to a community that has been good for her.
“”I want to encourage the community to jump start back up,” she said. “There are too many ghosts, businesses that are here and gone. Our people are not supporting one another. I want to patronize local businesses. I want to give them my money.”
Gammon said, “There is a need for this business. The economy is what it is, but women still need to feel good about themselves. They can get quality merchandise here at an affordable price, and they can empty their closets and get checks.”
Gammon said she takes quality goods only for 60 days because “I work to get them out the door, and people need to get a check now – not later.”
Her 1,400 square foot store is where Sun Video used to be in the Food Lion Shopping Center off Bypass 17 in Murrells Inlet.
“People say I should ask that the newspaper boxes out front be moved because they are blocking my store,” she said. “I tell them, ‘Are you crazy, people actually get out of their cars right in front of my business.’”
She opened up in December and already has a nice selection of jewelry, shoes, purses and ladies casual, business and formal wear. She has two dressing rooms in back.
She takes major credit cards and all sales are final. She does a 50/50 split on consignment.
“We have something for everyone in here,” she said, “and our inventory will grow.”
Gammon said she was in the limousine business in Manhattan for 25 years. She has two sons, both college graduates, both in New Jersey. One is an electrical contractor and the other is in construction.
(Castaway’s Consignment & Resale is located at 758 B Mink Avenue, on 17 Bypass South near Route 707. The phone number is 843-808-1384.)

I treated my staff, which is me, and my wife, Debbie, to a dinner on the Messenger in late December to celebrate 2011, our second year of publishing.
Honestly, I was doing it more for my wife than anything else. I did not feel like celebrating because I didn’t feel like there was much to celebrate.
How wrong I was.
I don’t know why, but I decided to treat it like a regular office party, complete with speech about our accomplishments in the past year. I didn’t think the speech would be long. With more than 500 businesses in Murrells Inlet and Garden City Beach, I didn’t think having 25-30 advertisers a month was a victory. Nor did I think our December and estimated January numbers (down 25 percent from last year) merited a big whoop.
How wrong I was.
Numbers don’t lie, so I looked at the numbers and compared 2010, our first year, with 2011.
Whoa!
Revenue up 38 percent. Advertising up 17% (about half the total newspaper revenue increase was from publishing “Murrells Inlet: Memories, Memoirs and Miracles,” a book with many of the paper’s articles from Feb. 2010 – Sept. 2011.)
We sold about 500 of our books.
I was able to buy a Mac, newspaper design software, a Nikon D3000 camera, a desk, and a Kindle.
I was also able to pay a good, local designer (Nathan Kirk) a good wage for his hours, helping him in his new business. And, I was able to pay myself a decent half salary (many businesses don’t even break even until their third year.)
Lest I forget, and I do, the Messenger won four of the nine state writing awards associate members of the South Carolina Press Association were eligible for in the 2010 awards contest.
Most importantly, I was able to glorify God without extensive editing or having stories bagged because, well, I’m the editor. I decide what goes in and stays out, and God goes in because without Him I wouldn’t still be alive and writing. Without Him, I would have never started the Messenger.
So, why was I bummed?
I think it was because I am, by nature, a glass half empty guy. Sad, but true. Instead of looking at all I had, I was focused on the 470 businesses who didn’t advertise. I was focused on all the businesses that said “no” and not all the ones who said “yes.”
Instead of looking at the other local papers, which I did as part of this office party review, I was looking only at my paper. By looking at the others and seeing how little advertising they had in the grand scheme of things, and how much advertising had dropped in them in the past few years, I said, “Heck, we’re not doing bad at all.”
Instead of bringing to mind all the calls and emails I have received thanking me for an encouraging, inspiring and informing publication, I was thinking about the people who should have thanked me but didn’t; all the MI natives and MI institutions who don’t advertise or support the paper instead of all those who do. And, instead of realizing God is in control when everything looks so out of control, I tried to control things I couldn’t control, and failed.
Instead of being thankful that we doing more than just survive in the Great Recession, and in an industry that everyone says is dying, I was wondering why we weren’t thriving.
I am so blind sometimes.
I have index cards that remind me to count my blessings, make a gratitude list, thank God in all circumstances, cast all my anxieties upon Him, etc., and yet my eyes never seem to see those words on the index card. My eyes only focus on call this paper, email that person, write this story, put this up on Facebook, add this to the Web site….
This new year, 2012, I pray the Lord will open my eyes to see the glass half full.
Needless to say, we had a great office party as I shared all the good things that had happened to the Messenger in 2011. And, the party was made that much sweeter by being able to share it all with a glass always full type of girl, my incredible, encouraging and inspiring wife, Debbie.
What a great way to ring in the New Year.