Doing the Sunset; prejudice of all sorts

By GRAHAM OSTEEN
Editor-At-Large
graham@theitem.com

The topics this week are Shawn Weatherly, Kay Krumpotich, local health care, and Southern racism, real and perceived.

The current issue of "Iris Magazine," The Item's version of "Vanity Fair," features Sumter native Shawn Weatherly, Miss Universe 1980. She is an original "Baywatch" girl and one of the true legends of Sumter, alongside such luminaries as Charles Mason, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mood Dollard, Heyward Crowson, Bernie Jones, Ernest Finney, Bobby Richardson, Freddie Solomon and Eddie Rimini.

I knew Shawn long before she became Miss Universe, and resisted her siren calls of "let's leave this one horse town together forever" when I was home from reform school in the summers. Besides, I was just a teenager then, and I liked the YMCA summer basketball league, waterskiing at the lake and going to Friday's on Broad Street with a fake ID that said I was 23 and lived in Idaho.

Ironically, the whole "Baywatch" theme of beautiful women hanging around water and rescuing hapless morons came naturally to Shawn and Kay Krumpotich, Joe's baby girl. They were among the most beautiful lifeguards in South Carolina history, and just happened to both work at the Sunset Country Club in the late 1970s.

I was one of the many younger males who understood inherently why the adult golfers in their stylish "Sansabelt" slacks, purchased at the downtown University Shop from Cowboy Osteen and Halsell Roberts, spent more time "seeing who was at the pool" than on the golf course, driving range or even in the bar. The scenery was just too much for the weekend warriors to resist.

Sure enough, Shawn won the Miss Universe title soon after and it was confirmed once again that Sumter is the Center of the Universe.

As the "Iris Magazine" story demonstrates, Shawn has done well for herself.

I would add that so has another legendary Sumter character, Dale Bullard, who was the lucky man who married Kay. They live in Jacksonville, Fla., and have two grown daughters. I keep up with them through Cotton, and you have to be from Sumter to know what I mean.


The Tuomey lawsuit and resultant coverage in The Item is, as to be expected, a source of ongoing attention and consternation for many people in the community.

Like all of us here at The Item, I want Tuomey to prevail in this complicated, expensive mess, become even stronger, and continue to expand and attract the best medical talent in the world to the Gamecock City.

I proudly claim a grandfather, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and countless friends as doctors, and I can say with certainty they all think they're brilliant and right all the time. In many ways, I'm sure that's true.

As this saga unfolds, however, it is our responsibility as the only credible news source in this town since at least 1894 to ask questions, explain what's happening, and do our best to make sure all the facts are out there.

If we're missing some aspect of a story in the dozens of stories being done on this steadily unfolding saga, then we'll do our best to back up and explain it. That's what a newspaper is supposed to do.

So for all you doctors out there who would rather not have to deal with it at all and I don't blame you please take two aspirin and make a copy of your insurance card, front and back. Then take a seat in the waiting room and check out the "People" magazines from 2002. Or you can write a letter to the editor.


U.S. Rep. "Rebel Joe" Wilson and the insufferable Gov. Mark Sanford have combined to make South Carolina a flashpoint for national stupidity, and caused my Palmetto State to be held up to ridicule by some well-meaning but mostly just asinine and bombastic Americans everywhere.

I'm sorry it happened, but I'm confident the people who know anything at all about us down here know that we, the people of South Carolina, black and white, can't be judged by the behavior of a few bad apples any more than they can. That's a slippery slope.

We will be judged ultimately by our good manners, common sense and ability to see the positive aspects of life in spite of those who sometimes make the world mean and unpleasant, like snarky New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

We Southerners have together, and for many generations, soldiered on despite the terrible consequences of slavery, secession, civil war, Sherman's March, Reconstruction, segregation and national ridicule brought on by bad decisions going back 300 years. We're survivors, we're patient, we're gracious and we keep our sense of humor intact even around people we don't like. And there are a lot of them in this world.

But even we can grow tired of being portrayed negatively by those whose understanding of South Carolina's rich fabric of people and experience comes only from tired regurgitations and embarrassing stereotypes.

There isn't a place on God's green Earth without some degree of racism, sectarianism, bias and discrimination against somebody for some reason. It's a human frailty, and no human is immune. We all need to look in the mirror more carefully.

Rebel Joe Wilson screwed up by dishonoring the president and embarrassing the state, and it may well have revealed some deep-seated, unresolved racial issues. In that case, it's a personal problem that blew up in public. But to attribute motives to him because he's a white man from South Carolina is in many ways a worse sort of narrow-mindedness.

No matter how you slice it, there's a nasty, un-American form of prejudice at work on many levels, and I pray President Obama will continue to stay above the loud, hostile voices of all colors, and lead our nation from a position of moral strength and righteousness.

That's how Shawn and Kay did it at the Sunset, and my generation survived those tumultuous teenage years in Sumter.

Graham Osteen is co-president of Osteen Publishing Co. and Editor-At-Large of The Item. Contact him at The Item, 20 North Magnolia St., Sumter, S.C., 29150; graham@theitem.com, or call 803-774-1352.