Beloved resident and long-time city clerk to celebrate 90th birthday
by Jenny Peterson | Current Staff Writer
Marlene Estridge (née Browning) still goes to work each week at Folly Beach City Hall, a routine she has done for nearly 65 years. At age 90, she’s the oldest, and longest-running, city employee in the city’s history.
While she officially “retired” about 15 years after serving tirelessly as the city clerk, her duties now include coming in two days a week compiling historical documents and archived media in a scrapbook.
“If I stay until July, I will have been ‘working’ for the city for 63 years,” Estridge said. “I worked for every mayor that we’ve ever had.”
With a memory as sharp as a tack, Estridge recalls the early aughts on Folly Beach, where her family first moved in the year 1943 from Barnwell, SC when she was nine years old. Her father came to work at the nearby Navy Yard. The family, which included four children including Marlene, rented a house on the beach.
She recalls the Folly tollbooth near Bowen’s Island and having to buy drinking water from a water truck that would make its rounds on the beach, filling up five-gallon jugs for a quarter each.
She remembers the bowling alley where McKevlin’s Surf Shop now stands and sleeping on the porch in the summer when her father rented out her and her sibling’s bedrooms to surfers who would knock on their door “begging for a place to stay” in the 1950s.
She learned how to drive a car on the beach—cars were allowed on the sand back then—and Folly Beach is also where she met the love of her life, Marvin Estridge, who she started dating in the ninth grade, meeting up at Folly hangouts.
“The place where Snapper Jack’s is was called Folly Drug Sundries and that’s where we hung out. There were also snack places in the summertime. As a teenager, Marvin worked at the bowling alley setting up pins,” Marlene recalls.
The Folly Pier in the 1950s and 1960s was a pavilion and boardwalk with a number of big name bands, including pop bands the Ink Spots and Pat Boone performing with the ocean in the background.
To celebrate her long and full life, friends and family will celebrate Marlene’s 90th birthday at a party set for March 9 from 2-4 p.m. at the Folly Beach Baptist Church, organized by her daughter-in-law. Marlene has invited all the Folly “old-timers,” a surprisingly large group of people who have lived on Folly their whole lives who still enjoy all the beach has to offer.
Folly Forever
Marlene and Marvin married in 1953 and moved to Illinois in the Great Lakes area —where Marvin was stationed in the navy and where he also had family. They returned just two years later to Charleston; first living in Summerville, then James Island and finally back to the Edge of America for good.
Marlene recalls they moved back to the beach when her son, Marvin, Jr., who was born in 1954 and will celebrate 70 years this year, was just over one year old. The couple had another son, William.
The Estridges were welcomed back to the beach by Marlene’s family. Her father had become an in-demand handyman and property owner and investor, eventually owning 14 properties on Folly Beach, several of which are still standing today.
Estridge was asked to work at city hall in 1961 by a friend she knew because both their husbands were volunteer firefighters on the beach. Marlene previously worked at a bank in downtown Charleston before getting married.
“There were two ladies in the office. One did all of the business licenses and permits and the other handled the water department. The lady doing the business licenses was leaving and I was asked if I would like to work there,” Marlene said.
That started more than half a century working for the city, where Marlene was promoted to city clerk and saw firsthand the city’s vast evolution and growth. She said the town worked through its growing pains and popularity as early as the 1960s.
“I remember there was a lot of controversy about when surfers started ‘taking over.’ There were so many summer homes and with one policeman out in the summer time…surfers would go in people’s (empty) houses to use their showers. And so that was a lot of controversy back then and the city started assigning (specific) places that people could surf,” Marlene said.
She recalls the destruction from Hurricane Hugo in 1989 (including severe damage to her own house that took nearly nine months to repair) with city staffers working around the clock to issue building licenses and more to get people back home. She stayed with family in James Island.
“It was hard coming over while it was still dark and staying until after dark,” she said.
Marlene became so synonymous with city hall that a local singer even penned a song about her.
“Rick Huff was a Jimmy Buffett-type and when we built the new (city) building, they had the groundbreaking and they invited senators and people like that. And they kept telling me, ‘Come sit down’ because they were going to sing. I was busy with the refreshments and they said, ‘Marlene, please sit down and stop a minute,’ and I finally did and he wrote a song that goes, ‘It’s Marlene…the council runs this city, but it’s Marlene,’” she laughs. “It was a song people could sing along to because it’s a tune that’s shag (dance) music.”
Marlene looks back fondly on her life on the beach and holds on to the memories she was able to share with Marvin, who died in his 40s, from heart health complications. Marlene said she never went on another date, after losing the love of her life.
“My favorite era on Folly was the 1950s. I got married in 1953, we had big name bands come to the pier, we had a nightclub. We would swim off the dock in the river. You knew everybody on the street. If somebody had a cookout, the whole street was invited.”
Today, Marlene is still a member of the Folly Baptist Church and sings in the choir. She’s active with a senior citizens walking group on Folly Beach organized by a physical therapist. Last week, she walked two miles.
“My favorite thing about Folly is the people. I was baptized at the church down here. There are people I’ve been friends with for 50 years, even a high school friend moved back,” she said. “I don’t feel 90 at all.”
