Ex-Marine was longtime supporter of James Island

They didn't even date before they wed, but James Island Mayor Mary Clark said Wednesday that Walter W. Herbert was "the love of my life."

Herbert, 88, a retired Marine master gunnery sergeant, died Tuesday at home after a long illness.

Though he fought in three wars in a distinguished military career, Clark said Herbert also should be remembered as an unselfish, kind and caring man, a history, tennis and horticulture enthusiast, and a loving husband.

A 1938 Charleston High School graduate, Herbert was a junior at The Citadel when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941.

He immediately enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

He retired in 1970 after having already begun the Herbert Tennis Center on James Island.

Herbert later received a Citadel class ring with no graduation date on it.

"He never took that ring off," said Clark, who married Herbert in 2004.

Herbert was one of the original supporters of incorporation for the town of James Island, and he donated money to keep the town operating in its earliest days.

He was a frequent visitor at town hall, and apparently he had his eye on Clark long before she developed feelings for him.

"We did nothing until he asked me to marry him," Clark said.

Six months before Herbert popped the question while in church, he asked Clark while in town hall if she was married. She said no, and he then asked if she was looking. Clark said she told him, "If the right fellow came along."

"We got married when I was 71 and he was 83. I had spent 23 years saying, 'Never again,' " Clark said.

Clark said Herbert told her he admired her tenacity in fighting for the town, which has been incorporated three times, struck down by the courts twice and is again under legal challenge by the city of Charleston.

Clark said she feels she was honored twice in her life. "The first time was when he asked him to marry him, and the second was when he told me, 'You'd make a good jarhead.' "