VOLUNTEER PROFILE
CYNDY & SHEP McKINLEY
In the 1990s, Kiawah Island became a second home for Shep and Cyndy McKinley. The two had known each other since high school in Charlotte, sharing two proms before going their separate ways for college and then reuniting after graduation. Cyndy’ s parents owned a house on Kiawah, and every summer the young couple returned, eventually with their three children, while Shep worked through graduate school. Those were long, sun-drenched months filled with research, family, and the kind of freedom that comes from living at the edge of the sea.
“ Shep was looking for a dissertation topic for his PhD,” Cyndy recalls.“ He talked to Richard Bowens, a son of a phosphate miner two generations removed from slavery, at Drayton Hall about the mining industry. I was like, Hey, why don’ t you do your dissertation in Charleston? We’ ve got a free place to stay on Kiawah!”
Shep agreed, shifting his research to the Lowcountry. Kiawah became a base camp as he dug into the industrial and social history of post-Civil War Charleston. He later turned the dissertation into his book Stinking Stones and Rocks of Gold: Phosphate, Fertilizer, and Industrialization in Postbellum South Carolina. After school, Shep landed a teaching job at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and
28 • KIAWAH CONSERVANCY