About Tybee Island
By Sandi Postle
    When we first visited Tybee about 8 years ago, we fell in love with her
    beauty, natural resources, and people. Tybee felt more like home even
    more than our home in Illinois. We didn’t want to go back to the cold mid-
    west. But we did; we had to.  Family, jobs, roots, all called us back.

    We were so lucky and blessed to get back to Tybee for our retirement
    about a year later. And since  then, for the past seven years -this is our
    home. We have no intentions of living anywhere else.

    Recently, I made a new friend and she told me she grew up on Tybee and
    attended the Tybee School. She shared some of her memories of what
    Tybee used to be like, the old pier with the roller rink, dancing to the big
    band music, the amusement park, the DeSoto—most of you here can
    relate to these Tybee memories which to me are only stories, glimpses of
    the past because I’ve seen some old photographs in the museum or
    listened to other Tybee natives tell the tales.

    So, we’re all here because of similar feelings about Tybee-some of us are
    newcomers- and some of us are life-long Tybeeites. All of us care about
    this wondrous place. Yes it has changed. All places do in time. Some
    changes can be for the good, and others not.

    Let’s use this sense of community—our shared love of Tybee-- to help
    keep Tybee the beautiful paradise it is. We need to protect our shoreline,
    our marshes, our wildlife, our trees, our historic fabric, our mere
    existence, because without that, Tybee would not exist. We would all be
    living who knows where?  To do this, we need to ensure that our
    governmental leaders all believe in Tybee too. By the actions of many of
    those in our current council, one wonders what they care about—it sure
    doesn’t seem like they were looking out for Tybee and her future. We
    formed Forever Tybee to help ensure that future leaders make sound,
    ethical, decisions, based on what is good for the whole community, not
    for themselves. Open and transparent government is a phrase that even
    the current council members will claim they believe in, but did they
    demonstrate this belief when they continually treated citizens with
    disrespect? When they seemed to make up their minds before even
    listening to citizens’ who came before them? By throwing out the work of
    many volunteers who worked countless hours on committees studying
    the science and technical nuances of having a good, fair shore protection
    ordinance? By dropping the Ethics ordinance so they could be
    unencumbered by it’s restraints and vote in favor of their financial
    supporters?

    This process of developing the Forever Tybee PAC has been a great
    learning experience and we are now about to move to the next steps-the
    real reason for being- that is to help elect government leaders—city
    council members- who believe that their mission is to think of all the
    things we value about Tybee each time they meet. With each decision
    they make-and we all won’t agree with each of them all the time—but
    hopefully, they are considering these ‘values’ that we described earlier,
    when they vote. We want to elect good people, intelligent thinkers,
    problem solvers, people with personal ethics, and pride in Tybee Island
    and her people.

    Each of you here can help to reach others and thus ensure success in
    November. Tybee and her future are at stake.
About Forever Tybee