| Not long ago, I got an email from someone who saw some photos of Tiller Memorial Pier on my personal website about Florida beaches. She said she was related to Mr. Tiller and had no idea a pier had been named in his honor. Would I please send her more information about the pier?
In August of 2007 I had made a trip to northwest Florida and spent most of one day at St. Andrews State Park on the east end of Panama City Beach. It was an exceedingly hot and humid day. Had I not been so transfixed by the beauty of the clear emerald water and the white crystalline sand, I might have hurried back to my car and cranked up the air conditioner. But I sat on the rock jetty in the soggy heat until I had consumed all of my bottled water while watching the surfers, the snorkelers, and everyone else just luxuriating in the irresistible water. I used up a fair amount of storage on my camera's compact flash card too. I'd have gone in the water to cool off, but there were more beaches to visit that day. It's hard work being a professional beach bum. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Sitting on the jetty I couldn't help but notice the pier, not too far in the distance and built on tall wooden pilings. It was time to head back over the dunes to the car to get another bottle of ice water, and I had more beaches to discover that day, so I reluctantly got back in the car, flipped the air-conditioner on HIGH, which had little discernible effect for several minutes, and drove in the direction of the pier. If I see a pier, I just have to walk out to the end. That's just the way it is.
As piers go, G. C. Tiller is relatively tall, and relatively short. It's wooden, as a real pier should be, and has a few partially shaded benches. Nothing else really to note about the structure itself. The great thing about Tiller pier really isn't the pier itself. It's more like the finger pointing at the moon. The view is what captures the attention of whoever walks the planks of this pier.
Tiller Pier breaches the tall, brilliant white sand dunes and makes a straight line out into the clear emerald waters that are even more beautiful from the pier's elevated planking. I stood agog. Sure, I'd seen beautiful water before. I've been to the Florida Keys, to Mexico's Cozumel and Playa del Carmen. My home beaches on the lower Gulf coast have some pretty incredible water too. But I'd not seen this deep emerald color before.
To the east I could see the rock jetty I'd been sitting on just 15 minutes earlier, and to the west were the skyscraper-like beach resorts of Panama City Beach. I took another round of photos and some video. Then I just stood and stared. The wooden benches were too hot to sit on.
Finally the heat got the best of me and I headed back to the car for a brief cool-down before heading further west to check out more beaches. Almost as an afterthought I decided to snap a photo of the plaque dedicating the pier to Mr. Tiller. It reads:
“Dedicated in Memory of Glavis C. Tiller Jr. for His Distinguished Florida Park Service Career, July 15, 1957 – January 8, 1997.”
That's nearly forty years. Anyone who can put in forty years with any employer ought to have a pier named after himself.
G. C. Tiller did.
So I answered the lady's email by attaching a photo of the dedication plaque and remarking “Now you know as much about the pier as I do.”
I never did hear back from her, so I guess I'll never know, as radio commentator Paul Harvey would say “...the r-r-r-r-r-rest of the story." |
