A Brief History of Liz Gilland

I was "born and raised," as we Southerners are fond of saying, in Horry County. Conway was my hometown, and "the beach" (as we locals used to call the entire Grand Strand) was my second home. Like many inland residents, my family owned a small cottage at the beach and we moved over each May for the summer season, returning to Conway as the school year began (which was never before Labor Day back when I was a kid). Now that I'm on County Council, it helps to have a dual perspective of Horry - as one who grew up residing on both sides of the Waterway, which in many ways serves as The Great Divide in this county.

I graduated from Conway High School in 1968, and from Columbia College (a small women's college in our state's capitol) with a BA in English in 1972. For the next few years I taught high school in Columbia (English, creative writing and journalism) and worked on my Masters degree from USC in Counseling. With graduate degree in hand, I was hired in 1977 by Furman University in Greenville, SC.

As Coordinator of Student Life at Furman, the students introduced me to a relatively new genre of music, called Contemporary Christian Music, which I fell in love with. I also met and became close friends with a freshman from Nashville named Amy Grant. Amy transferred to Vanderbilt after 2 years, to be closer to family and the recording industry, and I moved there as well, to get involved in the Christian music business.

For the next 10 years, I worked primarily in the music business, doing national radio promotions, public relations work, tour support for several artists, and a variety of freelance jobs. I also began to write articles and regular monthly columns for several national Christian magazines.

Also during those 10 years in Nashville, I became involved in short-term mission work through my church. I visited Haiti four times with church-building teams, and traveled to China once to smuggle Bibles into that country. I became involved with Youth With A Mission for almost a year (they had a very broad definition of the word "youth"), and was away at a mission training school and then lived in Micronesia (islands in the South Pacific) for several months. Life was good…

Eventually, I found myself torn between the Christian music business and the mission field, wrestling with where I should be in order to make the greatest difference in my world… and then my Mom fell and broke her hip.

I returned home to South Carolina for what I thought would be a few months to help my Mom… and I'm still here. It was a struggle to give in to the feeling that I should stay - I had fallen in love with Nashville and thought I'd found a home (or at least a home base from which to go out on mission trips) for life. But God works in mysterious ways… and He was very clear to me about my remaining here. I can remember asking over and over, "But what in Heaven's name am I supposed to do here?!?" Indeed.

For a little more than a year I worked a variety of jobs: with a real estate agent in Litchfield; night manager of a friend's ice cream parlor; house-sitter and kid-sitter for friends -- and then I stumbled into more public places. Missing my favorite style of music, I convinced a local radio station to let me have 3 hours on Sunday mornings to play Contemporary Christian music… and The Sunday Morning Show (on Sunny 106.5 and then on WYAK 103) became a local's favorite for nearly 8 years.

Following some comments I made on one particular Sunday morning concerning the very real threat of more and more topless bars moving into our area, I found myself leading what became one of the largest grass-roots movements ever in Horry County. I introduced a change to the zoning laws and, with the support of literally hundreds of concerned citizens, pushed it through the Planning Commission and the County Council. The task took from April until December of 1992, and during those months I researched the issue, gathered facts from experts around the country, learned legal opinions and court precedents, and spoke at dozens of community forums, service clubs, and churches to inform folks of what the battle was about. Television and newspaper reporters became familiar with my efforts, and the public began to be familiar with my cause.

To this day, there has not been one single legal adult entertainment establishment that has opened in Horry County since the amended ordinance passed (county zoning ordinances do not affect city property, so there have been a few to open in Myrtle Beach since then). I'm still proud of that. We didn't outlaw them, since the courts prohibit that, but we zoned them in such a way that most available sites are off of the main streets and highways. That was my goal. [And by the way, soon after my amendment passed, the County Council changed the rules so that no longer can a regular citizen propose changes to county ordinances. I guess I caused too much of a stir for the elected officials. Some things never change… :) ]

As folks began to take note of the increasingly familiar and outspoken woman in their midst, they began encouraging me to run for public office.
And two years later, I did. With incredible naivety, I printed a few simple index cards and began knocking on doors in District 8, which centered at that time around Conway.

I'm not sure what caused the public to choose me over the incumbent -- some liked my spunk, others liked my issues, still others liked the music I played on Sunday mornings… and quite a few were former patients of my father, who was a retired Surgeon. When I was a child, he was one of only 2 surgeons in the entire county - I think he operated on someone in nearly half the families in Horry County during his almost 40 years as an active physician, and many of them still loved and respected him. I probably got a good number of votes simply by being his daughter.

In January of 1995 I was sworn in as a rookie member of the Horry County Council, and the rest is political history. I was re-elected to my third term on council in 2002. In 2003, the chairman resigned and I won his seat, defeating four opponents.

Representing the citizens of Horry County for 12 years has been an incredible oppportunity. Much progress has been made in every area of county government during those 12 years, and I am pleased to have played a part in it. Your government is positioning itself for the future and one of the national leaders in cutting edge technology and communications.

People often say that a position on County Council is a thankless job, with long hours and little pay, lots of complaints and few commendations. I beg to differ with some of that. Everywhere I go in the county, folks speak to me with kind words and compliments, thanking me for serving and for speaking out on their behalf. Were that not the case, I'd have found another place to serve long ago.

Liz Gilland