Isle of Palms Spring 2016

air conditioning,” Hartnett said.

Later, his first job was on the island, with J.C. Long’s

construction company, as was his first date with Bonnie

Kennerly, his future bride.

“Our first date was a luau on front beach,” recalled

Bonnie Hartnett. “We were chaperoned by Henry and

Esther Tecklenburg, parents of Charleston Mayor John

Tecklenburg. There was a fire and we roasted marshmal-

lows and I think they cooked a pig. You could do that

back then.”

Later on, the couple would go to the end of the island

where Wild Dunes is now and shoot cans over the marsh.

“That was where I learned to shoot, when I was dat-

ing Tommy here at the end of the island,” Bonnie Hart-

nett remembered.

They were married in 1965, and they determined

to start their new life together on the Isle of Palms.

They purchased their first house on the island but never

moved in.

“We bought the house a month before we got mar-

ried,” recalled Hartnett. “There was no living together

then – she lived with her mom and dad and I lived with

mine – but she was teaching school in North Charleston

and I was working downtown. We got to thinking about

it, and it just wasn’t the practical thing to do, so we sold

that house before we ever moved into it.”

More than a decade later, in 1977, the couple

bought another house on the Isle of Palms, this time

in Wild Dunes. It was their summer home until 2011,

when they became permanent residents.

Public Service callS

By the time the Hartnetts bought their home on the

Isle of Palms, Tommy was already a leader in the South

Carolina Statehouse. He was a rising star in the Repub-

lican Party as well, though his political career had begun

on the other side of the aisle.

In 1964, at the age of 22, Hartnett entered his first

political contest, running in the Democratic primary for the

State House of Representatives. He won that race as well as

the general election and went on to be re-elected three more

times, serving a total of eight years. He might have spent

The Hartnett children: Tom Jr. and Lee Anne.

Photo provided by Tommy Hartnett.