All of the above represent a permanent source of pleasure for Shapiro and his wife, whose South Carolina family ties date to around 1680. (“We joke that if you’re here for any number of generations, you’re related to everyone else,” he laughs.) His wife’s specialized hobby is searching for old pottery, glass, clay pipes, weapons, and other artifacts from varied generations of residents, occupying Revolutionary and Civil War armies and even the notorious pirates, including Blackbeard, who frequented the area. Among the “treasure chests,” are the 16th, 17th and 18th century dumps, long covered over, on James Island, where the Shapiros live. It’s one of at least 18 islands clustered around the city roper on its peninsula.

Charleston’s “icing on the cake” for Michael Kilby, MD, is that his 12th-floor office overlooks the harbor, the ships, bridges, and a waterfront cluster of handsome historic homes. Driving over the Cooper River on the spectacular new Arthur Ravenel, Jr., Bridge from his home in suburban Mt. Pleasant is a special pleasure, he says. Opened in 2005 to replace the picturesque but decaying Cooper River Bridge, the Ravenel is North America’s longest cable-stayed span. (An egocentric joke among native Charlestonians has it that the two rivers flanking their city, the Ashley and the Cooper, come together to form the Atlantic Ocean.)

The Hidden

Gems of Charleston

“Charleston is a great town to walk in,” says Steven Shapiro, MD. “We find all these little hidden gems—architecture and gardens and little alleys...” All
of the above contribute to the historic charm that’s been

attracting visitors for decades. At least eight architectural styles are part of the city’s ambience, and several of the homes, gardens, and nearby plantations are open to the public. Special homes tours are part of the scene, and four major garden-related festivals are also held from January through October.

Charleston was the early and undisputed center of drama and theater in the colonies. Its culture included the first theater (Dock Street, still in operation) and the St. Cecilia Society, known as the first musical organization to support a paid orchestra. Its numerous concerts are still eagerly attended as are concerts by the Charleston Symphony, which brought strains of Beethoven and Bach to residents 24 years before New York Philharmonic’s first concert.
In fact, Charleston’s musical reputation was what attracted Europe’s first “immigrant” composer, Carl Theodore Pachelbel, son of the famed Canon in D composer, Johann. Today the drama and all genres of music are still part of city life.

Museum lovers

can almost overdose themselves on Meeting Street, a major thoroughfare since colonial days and now designated Charleston’s Museum Mile, complete with six museums (including the Gibbes Art Museum), five historic houses, four scenic parks, five significant churches, and six historic public buildings.

But history didn’t come to a halt sometime in the mid 1800s. The city abounds with enticing visitor sites of a more modern nature. You can sit in Pew 43 at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church where George Washington worshiped and visit graveyards with “celebrity” tombs and designer headstones, but many other attractions await, such as the South Carolina Aquarium, three water parks, the “heroic” World War II aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (star feature of a huge naval museum), the Charleston Hanger Skateboard Park and, surprisingly, the Carolina Ice Palace.

There are baseball, soccer and hockey games to enjoy, historic forts to inspect, untold varieties of fish to catch, eco-tours, shells to find, dolphins to watch, and wildlife refuges to tour. And there are mouthwatering crab cakes, shrimp, oysters, and near-sinful southern cuisine waiting in elegant—and everyday—dining palaces, the perfect ending to a day on the town.

But, for Kilby, who relocated a few months ago from Birmingham, Ala., and is planning to build a home, the city’s scrupulous historic homes protectionism can sometimes go too far. “In a town like Charleston that is very much about history and neighborhood planning, it can be quite an adventure to get all the approvals to build a house. There are rather strict rules about what you can build.” The good news: “I think we’ve jumped through all the hoops so far.” Permit problems aside, the Kilbys are delighted to be on the fringe of a large city while in an area “just filled with wildlife. It’s like living in a nature preserve,” he says.

Besides observing animals and birds au naturel, the flat territory and natural beauty has made Charleston “a great place to jog,” he adds. Another pleasant discovery: “The restaurants are famous for fine food; not just the upscale, expensive establishments, but many neighborhood bistros.”

Schools are a plus, too. “A lot of cities have reputations for bad ones, but in Mt. Pleasant we’ve been very happy with them,” especially because of the music programs, he reports. His sons, 12 and 15, play piano and guitar, and both are drummers in marching bands.

Professional possibilities

As for career opportunities, Kilby admits he was a hard sell at first. “I was happy in Birmingham and had a good job in charge of an HIV clinic. It was also a nice circumstance for me to be in, in terms of the research that I do.” But recruiters at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), founded in 1824 and the South’s oldest medical school, were persistent. After four or five visits, he was persuaded that he’d be happy as the university’s director of the Division of Infectious Diseases, with time to treat patients as well. Another tempting aspect of the move was that it brought him closer to much of his family still living in North Carolina.

In a city immersed in family lineage, defeating dread modern epidemics seems to follow a genealogy of its own. Kilby and his associates are crusading against acute HIV and other 21st-century scourges, as their predecessors fought the 18th and 19th-century monsters of smallpox, yellow fever, and cattle plagues.

Other MUSC research projects, some in conjunction with a University Health System Consortium, cover such varied areas as epilepsy, delirium, gender factors affecting women’s health, the relationship of garlic in treating brain cancer, and a wound-healing peptide gel that generates new tissue instead of scar tissue. The research can be put to practical use in the associated 576-bed MUSC hospital, some of whose specialty areas are arthritis, bariatric, digestive disease, and bone and joint centers, in addition to heart/vascular and cancer centers. The hospital has been cited as a leading U.S. transplant facility, with special commendations for its kidney, liver, and pancreas procedures.

As soon as finances permit, the unit will be looking to hire more research physicians, Kilby says. A 6.7 percent population growth from 1990 to 2000 in the tri-county Charleston area has been increasing the need for other practitioners as well.

One example: Shanon Honney, MD, reports that her practice, Charleston Internal Medicine, recently took on a new partner. Her return in 1992 after a hiatus in San Francisco was a homecoming, not to mention a true change of pace. Like Shapiro, she operates under the aegis of Roper St. Francis Healthcare, which comprises Roper, opened in 1829 as the Carolinas’ first community hospital, and the 1882 Bon Secours, South Carolina’s first Catholic hospital. Increasing demand for services have sparked plans for add-on facilities and two more locations as well. One is slated to open in 2010. Both institutions have installed state-of-the-art equipment. Roper has special concentrations, among others, in eye surgery, neurosciences, stroke, joint replacement, and spinal injuries.

Charleston’s third largest provider is Trident Health System, with a family of hospitals including Trident Medical Center in the city proper and, in two adjacent towns, Summerville and Moncks Corner Medical Centers. Among the health system’s partnerships with nationally recognized programs are its Human Motion Institute, Spirit of Women, and h2u. Honney’s route to the medical profession was circuitous, starting with journalism school and work with a major advertising agency. Then a year in nursing school ignited interest in the MD path, which finally gave her a chance to practice in a city where, as she puts it, “everybody knows your mama. It’s funny,” she smiles. “I went to high school here in Charleston and probably half of my graduating class went to medical school so I either went to high school with half the people I work with now—or with their brothers or their sisters.” Her three children may be repeating the cycle in their own way. Two attend charter baccalaureate schools; the third is in a Baptist grade school.

Professional conviviality goes far beyond old-school ties, though. Honney praises specialist colleagues for their ready cooperation when she needs them. “I don’t think I’ve ever needed a specialist and not been able to find even some really bizarre expertise.” Not only that. “They’re very communicative. If I send a patient to any of them, they’ll call right away and let you know if there’s something going on.”

Charleston, she adds, offers more than a mere comfort zone for natives. “You can’t beat the weather, the beach is close, the city is wonderful. It has great restaurants, there are a lot of cultural events here—and we have the Spoleto Festival every year.”

This blockbuster festival is an offshoot of the 1957 annual event founded in Italy by composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Menotti pitched the American counterpart to Charleston, but it was the leadership of Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr., that brought the extravaganza of the arts to life in 1977. The wildly popular Piccolo Spoleto (little Spoleto), showcasing local artists of all genres, is now part of the festival mix.

Today, Riley, first elected in 1975 at age 32, may be the country’s current longest-serving mayor. In a masterpiece of understatement, historian Robert Rosen writes, “The Riley administration has been a whirlwind of activity.” The cyclone of civic achievement in the last 33 years has included such tangible examples as new convention center and hotel, rejuvenated central business district, new waterfront park, and housing rehabilitation programs. In promoting “a new age of tolerance, harmony, and creativity,” Riley brought more minorities and women into city leadership positions, and, in an especially intriguing move, appointed Reuben Greenberg, probably the nation’s first and only Jewish black police chief.

Greenberg is a modern addition to a long line of Charleston “firsts.” A few samples: Middleton Place, oldest U.S. landscaped garden, 1740; first U.S. Reformed Judaism synagogue still in use, 1749; oldest U.S. museum, 1773; first municipal chamber of commerce, 1773; site of first submarine warfare (the recently excavated Hunley is now on display), Feb. 16, 1864; first historic district zoning ordinance, 1931.

And, perhaps a harbinger of today’s breakthrough medical research at MUSC, historian Rosen reports, “Physicians were the first professional men to arrive in Charlestown (the city’s original name, for King Charles II).” Besides treating patients, one of them, Dr. John Lining, conducted the first studies in the colonies on “non-infectious diseases.”

That was in the 18th century. Who knows what important breakthroughs will happen, thanks to local medical research, in the 21st? Charleston physicians in are excited to do their part. UO