1: Love, “Cuba”

Few men reflect the times in which they live as vividly as William Douglas Pawley. Born in Florence, South Carolina, on September 7, 1896, he matured in a period when America was rapidly turning the corner from an agricultural economy to an industrial society. As amazing advances in technology were transforming the nation into a world power, this son of Edward Porcher Pawley and Mary Irene Wallace Pawley quickly recognized that fortunes were waiting to be made all around him—and all around the world— if he pursued them without fear of failure.

The Pawley family had roots in South Carolina dating to colonial times1 when Percival Pawley, Sr. in 1711 was granted the land in proximity to what is now Pawleys Island, an isle known in the 21st century for being an “arrogantly shabby” residential community where low-country cooking and beer mix freely with a refreshing breeze off the Atlantic Ocean. Earlier, in the 1700s, rice plantation owners such as Thomas George Pawley vacationed on Pawleys Island to escape the threat of malaria from May through October, because the isle was surrounded by saltwater marshes that were inhospitable to mosquito breeding.2 Even though Hurricane Ian made landfall less than 10 miles away in 2022 with a seven-foot surge that destroyed the pier, islanders quickly cleaned up the sand, mud and debris attesting to Pawleys Island’s resiliency over the centuries as a desirable southern beach destination.3 

Edward Porcher Pawley was born during the Civil War a few counties away from where the Confederate rebellion had exploded at Ft. Sumter. As a young man, he tried to make his fortune in cotton, but plantations suffered after their cheap slave labor was freed, and he soon faced bankruptcy. Fortunately, Edward had learned a merchant’s trade, selling dry goods in Florence, and was able to pursue other opportunities beyond South Carolina.4

The inflammatory sinking of the USS Maine triggered the Spanish-American War and the U.S. invasion of Cuba made famous by the American Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill. It not only catapulted the cavalry’s victorious leader, Colonel Teddy Roosevelt, to governor of New York State but made Cuba a fertile ground for William Pawley’s father’s ambitions. By 1900, Edward Porcher Pawley moved his wife, Mary, and their sons, George Plummer Pawley and William Douglas Pawley to eastern Cuba where he established E.P. Pawley Co. of Caimanera. About 1908, at some 64 years of age, he opened a branch store nearby at South Toro Cay, close to the wharf that supplied the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay.

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2: Aviation Crusaders

Three years after William and Annie Pawley’s wedding, his father began construction of Haiti’s “first modern hotel” on Bizoton Road in Port-au-Prince. Described as “the pride of the capital’s picturesque suburban country,” the 35-bedroom-suite hotel on Edward Porcher Pawley’s property was designed to attract guests by providing on-premises dining and dancing, a rooftop garden with views of the mountains and the bay, and access to swimming, boating, golfing, horseback riding, tennis courts and trap shooting.”1 (A century later, E.P. Pawley’s tropical paradise was considered the “most dangerous city” on the planet with profound famine fed by the ravages of hurricanes, earthquakes, cholera, poverty, gang warfare and political assassinations for control of most streets. Once beautiful, Haiti also was scarred by extreme deforestation as trees became a cheaper fuel alternative to gas and electricity.2)

By 1926, the knowledge William had gained from his father was beginning to pay off. He was on his way to becoming a millionaire in the Florida land speculation boom.3 While many took a major financial hit three years later when the Florida real estate bubble burst, William Pawley stayed afloat, having already shifted his attention elsewhere.

In 1927, Pawley went to Puerto Rico as a Curtiss Aviation representative.4 It was a life-changing career move that soon returned him to Cuba. In 1929, as the stock market roared toward a collapse, Pawley and Clement Melville Keys organized Compañía Nacional Cubana de Aviacion Curtiss operating out of Havana with the intention of providing passenger service, air mail service, air taxi service, pilot training, aircraft sales and aerial photography to enhance agricultural production.5 From a corporate structure point of view, the Cuban airline’s parent company was Intercontinent Aviation, Inc. which was formed as a subsidiary of the Curtiss-Keys group of aviation companies. Among the founders was financier Clarence Douglas Dillion, father of future Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillion.6

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