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| Harry Lee Edwards |
By RAY WYCHE
Staff Writer
It’s not surprising that Harry Lee Edwards feels a proprietary interest in Lake Waccamaw State Park.
One of the longest serving rangers in the North Carolina State Park System, Edwards was at the lake when the park was born and for many months thereafter he was the staff—the director, enforcement officer, maintenance and construction crew, interpreter of nature and garbage man.
Edwards has decided to retire by the end of the month, after 28 1/2 years. He has turned down several opportunities for promotion in the park system, but to have accepted these higher level positions, he would have to have left his beloved Lake Waccamaw.
Edwards’ interest in and intimate knowledge of the 1,734 acres of sandy land interspersed with swamps on the southeast shore of Lake Waccamaw that was to become the state park began years before the state purchased the first acre of land. His home, built by his late father, for many years was the closest dwelling to what was to become Lake Waccamaw State Park.
“This was my playground, my backyard where I fished and hunted,” he says. “I’ve put a lot of sweat and blood into what is here.”
He recalls as a child riding through the open, sandy pinelands with his parents and his dogs in a war surplus 1943 Willys Jeep, and later driving the vehicle on his own for a close-up view of the natural beauty of the isolated patch of woods and swampland.
Edwards helped guide the growth of the park from the original 273-acre sand ridge, accessible only by a sand trail or by boat, to the present park complex with a campground, piers, boardwalks, hiking trails, a picnic area and a spacious visitors center with meeting rooms, laboratories for students, auditorium and exhibits showing the flora and fauna of the area.
A state park along the shores of Lake Waccamaw was first proposed almost a century ago but no state funds were forthcoming to carry out the proposal. It was in May 1976 that the original land corner of the park was placed in a thicket of gallberry bushes, bay trees and longleaf pines that marked the 273 acres that was to grow into a state park. The deeply rutted sand trail, to be traversed only by experienced woods drivers, was the only vehicular access.
At the beginning, it was a park in name only.
”I was the lone ranger,” Edwards says. “We had 12 picnic tables, four trash cans and two pit privies.” He was the only employee. In those first months, he used his own pickup truck to take care of the park’s transportation needs and his own boat to perform park duties involving work on the lake itself.
A boat was necessary since Edwards was responsible for inspecting and permitting some 300 structures (now more than 600) built over lake waters.
In about 1984, after years of begging and cajoling, the state granted a special appropriation of $100,000 with which to construct a passable road to the park. Things were looking up but more help was needed.
“The old rangers had to do it all,” Edwards says of the early days of the park when he had to work with what he had, handling much of the carpentry work and road maintenance by himself. Resources were scarce.
“I’ve been known to straighten bent nails to use to make repairs,” he says.
“We had responsibility for the whole lake,” he says, with its more than 9,000 acres of water and with countless boaters, swimmers, fishermen and water skiers as well as piers and boathouses.
After earning a degree in environmental sciences from UNC-Wilmington, Edwards returned home and worked a few months as public works superintendent for the Town of Lake Waccamaw. When the park decided a ranger would be hired, Edwards got the job.
A certified law enforcement officer (as are all park rangers), he is also certified as a rescue first responder and in fire management and environmental education.
In the beginning of his service, Edwards’ home was park headquarters since there was no telephone in the park. “I kept all the park supplies at my house,” he says. But things gradually improved.
“1990 was a pretty big year for us,” he says. “We got a toilet building, a small shop, storage space and a small office. We finally got a pickup truck—with no air conditioning,” he says, “but I still used my personal boat until the mid-1990s.”
As money became available, the park began to look like a park. A $100.000 special appropriation paid for a paved driveway and parking area by 1992. Much of the labor involved in turning the sand trail into a passable road was done without charge by the pulp and paper company—Riegel originally, then Federal and now International Paper—that owned much the land surrounding the park.
Edwards became adept at getting free work from the company that at that time owned road-building equipment. Much of the work done on the park terrain was done free and in keeping with the park system’s ideal of leaving the area as natural as possible.
“We’re fortunate. This area (park) is this now instead of another housing project.”
“A lot of this stuff we got by my begging, my knowing the right people,” he says.
What will Edwards do now that his long days of advising campers, lecturing on the park’s plants and animals, checking piers and conducting controlled burns in the park’s forestlands are nearing an end?
“I really don’t know,” he says. “It kind of slipped up on me that I had enough time in to get out. I may become a fishing guide. I’ve thought about that.”
Whatever his future holds, it will have something to do with Edwards’ beloved Lake Waccamaw.