Todd Stowe

The Reluctant Commodore
Leads “Blue Skies & Starry Nights”

story by JEANNE REYNOLDS          photos by SUSAN DELOACH

Free stuff.

That’s all it took to recruit Todd Stowe for the Beaufort Water Festival team.
“I’ve made a lot of big decisions in my life, but I’ve always put a lot of thought into them: going to college when I couldn’t afford it, moving to a town I never heard of, getting married, having children, buying a home,” he says. “I’ve never made such a spur-of-the-moment decision that had such a big impact on my life.”

Barely a year out of college and a neophyte business education teacher, football and wrestling coach at Beaufort High School, Todd immediately accepted a friend’s enticement to join the festival’s “fence crew” — putting up temporary fencing around designated areas in the park, taking it down every night, and repeating the process every day for a week or longer.

That was 30 years ago, and he’s barely missed a year since. The role was an instant fit for Todd, who paid his way through college at the University of Georgia by working high-rise construction in Atlanta during the summers.

“I’m good at building things and carrying heavy objects,” Todd laughs. “I’ve volunteered mostly in the park because it’s something I like. I tried a few other positions but didn’t like them as much as being in the park. I got to work under and with some very good people, and enjoyed it.”

He eventually moved up to a director position, still mostly focused on setting up, building, and fixing things in the park — but for nearly 20 years, he says he actively avoided promotions into leadership roles. Finally, in 2016, he became a coordinator, which requires volunteers to take responsibility for a different key element of the festival every year, such as managing the stage, working with sponsors, handling ticket sales, and merchandising. He says his favorite of those new tasks was marketing and public relations — surprising until you learn his current “paying job” is teaching computer graphics at Bridges Preparatory School.

“I’m good with a computer and I like numbers,” Todd says. “A computer is just a tool, like a hammer.”
It also explains why he came to his first meeting as Commodore-to-be last fall with one of his most visible tasks — deciding on the festival’s theme for the year and the accompanying graphic design — already checked off.

“I wanted a Van Gogh theme on the T-shirt,” he says. “I’ve always admired his art, and it hadn’t been done before.”

The result is “Blue Skies & Starry Nights,” inspired by one of Van Gogh’s famous paintings. “I had the T-shirt done at our first meeting. Actually, I had it sketched out years ago,” he admits. “I like to plan. I’m a little OCD … okay, a lot OCD.”

By the way, teaching and a love of art are family traits. Todd’s wife, Patsy, was an art teacher at Battery Creek High School for 28 years and will be the new high school art teacher at Bridges in the fall. Their older daughter, Christy, is also a teacher at Fairfield Middle School in Winnsboro, where she teaches math. Their younger daughter, Jessie, is a rising senior at Battery Creek.

MAKING A BIG SPLASH FOR 70 YEARS
“You don’t get to Beaufort unless you’re going to Beaufort. It’s out of the way,” Todd points out. “In 1956, a group of businessmen started the festival with two goals: one, to attract visitors and two, to provide affordable entertainment for families.”

They started by building up the annual sailing regatta, he explains. Parades, ski and air shows, and dances joined the lineup, gradually followed by fishing and golf tournaments, a craft market, sponsors’ and nonprofit expos, and lots of food and music. In the past seven decades, the festival has grown well beyond its “official” 10 days in July into a nearly year-round event, including a holiday boat parade in December, a spring golf tournament, 5K and 10K runs, a pickleball tournament and a fishing tournament in May, and a sailing regatta and a cornhole tournament in June.

Todd says his favorite festival events include the opening weekend’s Concert in the Park — “We get well-known national acts here in little Beaufort” — the more family-oriented Motown Monday concert, and the crazily popular talent show. “It’s the favorite night for parents. We arrive at 6 a.m. to start setting up the judges’ stand and have to move chairs that parents have already set out to watch that night’s performance.”

Under Todd’s leadership, the festival is continuing to expand and improve. New this year will be a big-screen viewing area in the green space behind the stage — ideal for those parents who didn’t capture their front-row seats for that talent show.

STILL RIDING THE WAVE
It’s not hard to understand the growth and popularity of the Water Festival, Todd says. “We’ve grown so much because the festival is really supported by the community.”

As big as the festival has grown, a tremendous amount of work goes on that most visitors never see.
“It’s pretty much a year-round job,” Todd says. His team started planning last September and is aided by about 400 community volunteers. “I’d like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our incredible volunteers and civic organizations, who work tirelessly behind the scenes to bring this vision to life,” he says in a letter on the Water Festival website. “As the plaque at the Waterfront Park so beautifully states, ‘There is nothing more caring, giving, and willing than the heart of a volunteer,’ and it is true.”

In keeping with the founders’ goals, it’s worth noting that many of the festival’s events are free, while others have small entry fees. “We’re not trying to make a profit,” Todd says. “We’re just trying to pay our bills.”

Todd’s personal goals for the Water Festival are equally simple: “Don’t mess it up and leave it better than I found it.”

And although you might — eventually — get the Commodore out of the park, it seems you can’t quite get the park out of the Commodore.

“One year I was standing behind the fencing at the front of the stage, looked out, and saw about 4,000 people having a great time, and I thought, ‘I did this.’ Now, I know it wasn’t just me, but it still gave me a good feeling. I get a lot of personal satisfaction from it.”