Gretchen and Jon Nickel

HELPING WALK FOR WATER MAKE A SPLASH ACROSS BEAUFORT COUNTY

story by JEANNE REYNOLDS                               photos by LILY OWEN

Gretchen and Jon Nickel have traveled extensively throughout Central America, South America, and Africa, and they’ve seen firsthand how people in developing countries live day to day without access to safe, clean water. But it wasn’t until they settled in Bluffton 10 years ago that they took active steps toward doing something about it.
“When we lived in Panama, we hosted Peace Corps workers in our home when they were in town for meetings because the hostels weren’t too safe,” Gretchen says. “Then we visited them in their remote villages, and it was an eye-opening experience.”

The Nickels first dipped their toes in the local waters when fellow members of Lowcountry Presbyterian Church invited them to join the Beaufort County Walk for Water in Port Royal in 2018 and again in 2019.

“That’s when we decided Bluffton needed its own walk,” Jon says. “The core group at our church was very supportive, and we had our first walk in 2020 during the pandemic, when the big community walk broke into separate smaller walks all over the County.”

That first year attracted a small following of about 15 walkers from Lowcountry Presbyterian. But the number doubled the following year when Bluffton United Methodist Church joined the effort, then mushroomed to 150 people last year when many more churches, clubs, and business sponsors got on board. This year, Beaufort County Walk for Water expects up to 1,000 participants between Bluffton and Port Royal — thanks in great part to the flood of enthusiastic support the Nickels are helping create.

“It’s an easy sell,” Jon says. “I like telling people how Water Mission’s systems are assembled entirely by volunteers at the Water Mission factory in North Charleston. It’s amazing how quickly they can get them to people in need.”

OPEN TO ADVENTURE
The Nickels are no strangers to new challenges and adventures. Jon grew up all over the world as the son of a career Army chaplain, got a degree in German literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and spent three years in that area as a social worker. He traveled cross-country to pursue a law degree at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before returning to the west coast for a job with a law firm in Portland, Oregon.

That move brought him close to Gretchen’s stomping grounds. She grew up in a small town in Oregon’s famed Willamette Valley wine region just outside Portland, graduating from Oregon State University as a home economics major with a degree in clothing and textiles, then working for several years for a department store and in sales for a hosiery company. The two met briefly one September at the Pendleton Roundup, one of the country’s oldest rodeos, then — luck or fate — ran into each other again at the same venue a year later and eventually lassoed each other.

After years of travel, in 2013, the Nickels went on vacation with friends at Sea Pines in Hilton Head. Within a week, they were talking to a realtor.

“We went home to Panama, packed, and moved to Bluffton,” Jon says.

STEPPING OUT TO HISTORIC HIGHS
With the Nickels helping lead Walk for Water’s expansion to a truly county-wide event, this year’s walks together plan to raise $100,000 to fight the global water crisis. That will push Beaufort County past the half-million-dollar milestone in its seventh year — enough to dramatically change the lives of more than 10,000 people in desperate need.

“It doesn’t get any more essential than having something to drink,” Jon says. “Water is the lifeblood.”

“Because of our exposure to people in Africa, Panama, Colombia, and Mexico, we’ve seen the need is very great,” Gretchen adds. “This is something we can do here — it’s that easy.”

 

HOW BEAUFORT COUNTY WALK FOR WATER WORKS

Beaufort County Walk for Water promotes awareness of the global water crisis and raises money to provide sustainable, safe water around the world. The money goes directly to Water Mission, a nonprofit Christian engineering organization based in Charleston that builds safe water solutions in developing countries and disaster areas.

Participants pay a small fee (which includes a T-shirt) to register as individuals or as part of a team of family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, or church members. On walk day, they join other community members at one of the two walk locations to traverse three miles together, carrying buckets they can partially fill with water at the halfway point.

The walk symbolizes the journey more than two billion people — mostly women and children — make every day to collect water for drinking, cooking, and washing. Not only is the trip difficult and sometimes dangerous, the water often is contaminated and leads to water-related illnesses that kill someone every 37 seconds, according to Water Mission.

 

BEAUFORT COUNTY WALK FOR WATER

What: 3-mile walk to raise awareness and money for access to safe, clean water in communities around the world through Water Mission

When and where: 9 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 16, at Live Oaks Park in Port Royal and Saturday, Sept. 23, at Wright Family Park in Bluffton

How much: $25 for adults 18+ ($20 with discount code EARLYBIRD23 when registering in advance online), $25 for students ($15 with discount code STUDENT23), $10 for youth 5–17, free for kids 4 and under. All preregistered participants get T-shirts, and those registered by Aug. 15 are guaranteed their preferred size.

More info: Learn more and register at walkforwater.com/beaufortco or call (843) 769-7395.

Follow: On Facebook and Instagram @BeaufortWalkforWater, and on Twitter #bftwalkforwater.

Sponsorship information: Contact Bob Lasher at (843) 906-8118 or rlasher5519@gmail.com.