THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 27, 1994 TAG: 9411240278
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS
STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: KITTY HAWK LENGTH: Long : 246 lines
DAVID STICK HAS managed to get into an argument with most everyone he's met, regardless of their rank or position.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was no exception.
Covering the president in the early 1940s for Washington radio commentator Fulton Lewis Jr., Stick overheard a flap between Roosevelt and some newspaper reporters. So Stick stuck in his two cents about radio coverage.
``He didn't think that was a very germane comment,'' Stick recalls, ``and I shut up.''
Through nearly 60 years in the public eye, Stick has crossed swords with ``almost everybody'' he's encountered. But only a very few have succeeded in shutting him up.
``I've disrupted many a meeting,'' Stick, 74, said recently at his Kitty Hawk home. ``I must be a perennial disruptor.''
Stick - historian, author, businessman, public official and private agitator - has left more marks on the Outer Banks than the footprints of sea birds on Dare County beaches.
His influence has been intellectual, political and practical, touching areas of life from state libraries to local charities.
His outspoken manner, his infamous tenacity, his stunning generosity have started committees, incorporated towns, established research centers and sparked controversies that ring from Rodanthe to Raleigh.
``He can be very pleasant,'' said Wynne Dough, curator of the Outer Banks History Center, which began after Stick donated his extensive library to the state eight years ago. ``And when he's unpleasant, he can be very unpleasant.''
``We have found ourselves at cross purposes from time to time,'' Dough said, ``but I don't think anybody who has lived in Dare County for more than six months could say anything different. At one time or another, he has been engaged in some kind of arm-wrestling match with just about everybody.
``He has done so much good for so long,'' Dough said. ``Only a fool would dismiss anything he says out of hand. But only a fool would take everything he says as gospel.''
Stick, whose dozen books place him at the forefront of Outer Banks research, who founded the Outer Banks Community Foundation, who chaired the Dare County Board of Commissioners and oversaw the incorporation of Southern Shores, says he has ``mellowed some.''
He concedes he's ``getting more sense, realizing that being bombastic, being so positive, almost seeming to try to force the other person to admit they're wrong, really doesn't accomplish anything.
``But I still have to get in my dig. I still have to get things done the way I consider is right.''
He's been doing that since he arrived on the Outer Banks with his family in 1929. ``I found the people very friendly, very easy to get along with, poor but probably as self-sufficient as any place in the country,'' Stick said. ``I just felt a part of it.''
Stick's father, Frank, was an immensely prolific illustrator of American outdoor scenes whose calendar and magazine renderings were treasured far and wide.
He had come to the Outer Banks after becoming disillusioned by commercial art and vowing not to paint for pay again.
But the elder Stick's prominence as an Outer Banks resident is historic in its own right. His most notable of many accomplishments was securing the establishment of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
His son's home is dotted with works by the father. David Stick also edited a book of his father's watercolors, and treasures his ancestry. He's in the process of collecting his father's early work into massive binders that sit on well-organized bookshelves in his living room.
The younger Stick quickly turned his own attention to writing. After attending Manteo public schools, Stick went on to edit the school paper at Elizabeth City High School before graduating in 1936.
At age 16, he was Dare County bureau manager for the Elizabeth City Daily Advance and a stringer for the Associated Press. Stick once rushed a one-sentence alert to the AP about a plane crash that killed two men. Then he prepared an expansive spread for his own paper, completely forgetting the wire service.
His brief ``story'' showed up later in the national AP newsletter for stringers - under the heading: ``How Not To Cover A Plane Crash.''
Stick went to work for Fulton Lewis Jr. in Washington in 1940 and was a combat correspondent for the Marine Corps from 1942-45. He spent two years as an associate editor of The American Legion Magazine in New York, where he helped select cartoons for publication. A glassed-in porch at his home boasts some 50 original drawings by such cartoonists as ``Dennis the Menace'' creator Hank Ketchum.
But though Stick's travels have taken him around the world, ``I always wanted to get back here.''
A combination of experiences growing up on the Outer Banks led Stick into the history business. He was fascinated by the annual commemoration of Virginia Dare's birth, moved by pilots' grateful visits to the Wright Brothers Memorial, enchanted by the shipwrecks he encountered while ``gogglefishing'' for sheepshead.
These events ``began to make me realize that there's a hell of a lot more to history than the names and the dates,'' Stick said.
His first book, ``Fabulous Dare,'' hit the shelves in 1949 and began a series of works that helped put the region on historians' maps.
``One could argue that there really wasn't a whole lot of serious attention paid to Outer Banks history until he started publishing,'' said Dough, the History Center curator. ``Not many people had really dissected local history and put it together in intelligent form.''
Stick's extensive research included the collection of his own library, which overran his Southern Shores home until he donated the collection to the state in 1986.
William Price, director of the N.C. Division of Archives and History, said he initially rejected the offer because he did not think the library should be housed on the Outer Banks, as Stick insisted it must.
``David ran every rabbit I put in the field,'' Price said. ``And at the end of it all, he came back to me with good solid reasons why other places would not work. . . . He and I have had our difficult moments, because he is so doggedly persistent and doesn't take no for an answer.''
The Outer Banks History Center collection, which Dough said is growing beyond Stick's original gift, is the second largest collection of North Carolina materials in the state behind the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill. ``In terms of coastal history, it's unrivaled,'' Price said.
And Stick continues recording history to this day.
``I've always got a pile of stuff that I want to do,'' he said, launching into a description of 100 archival boxes he's been sorting, organizing, and writing capsule histories on for posterity.
He hopes the histories - he's on the 27th capsule - will be the first point of background for researchers interested in such subjects as the Chamber of Commerce, Jockey's Ridge or the Coastal Area Management Act. The history on his father's efforts to found the Cape Hatteras National Seashore is 49 single-spaced pages.
Stick, frequently praised for the thoroughness and accuracy of his work, accepts the title historian but rejects being characterized as an academic.
I ain't no scholar,'' Stick said. ``Nobody who flunked out of college his freshman year could possibly be called a scholar.''
Stick said he was surprised to have been accepted at Chapel Hill after mediocre performances in high school and at a Vermont prep school. As a freshman working on The Daily Tar Heel, he was tapped to direct the North Carolina Scholastic Press Institute, and he flunked out of school.
``I never did learn the rules of grammar. I can't spell, I don't understand punctuation. I mean, this is basic stuff. There's so many areas in which I know nothing.''
In his late 20s and already a published author, Stick was asked by two teachers for advice on whether it was all right to split an infinitive, a verb with the word ``to'' in front of it.
``I said, `Ladies, I can't help you because I haven't the slightest idea what an infinitive is,' '' Stick says.
Just the same, the historian says he is always learning. ``I skip around so much,'' he said. ``I really get enthusiastic about things. And when I do, I try to learn as much as I can about it. . . . Then you're in a position to be listened to, and to accomplish something.
``I do work like the devil, and then I become involved, always with some goal in mind.''
Once the goal is achieved, he's ready to move on. ``If any one thing typifies me, it is my short attention span when it comes to public matters, to projects,'' Stick said.
``I do know when to back off,'' he added. ``I get concerned about a lot of things I shouldn't pay a damn bit of attention to.''
Others attest to Stick's thoroughness and commitment.
``David stands up for what he believes in,'' said Thomas B. Gray Sr., who chairs the Outer Banks History Center Advisory Committee and served 14 years on the Dare County Board of Commissioners. ``I have never known him to take a firm position unless he's researched it pretty well.''
``He is a fine individual, and he gives an awful lot of himself whenever he's called upon,'' said Gray, a friend and admirer of Stick's. ``I think Dare county is richer because of David.''
Whether Stick is agreeable ``depends on the project,'' said Manteo attorney Wallace H. McCown, who has worked with Stick on such projects as the Community Foundation and against him on issues like the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
``If we're on the same team, we work together great,'' McCown said. ``And if we're on opposite sides, we fight like hell. It's been a lot of fun.''
Stick still works, and he still travels. But his affection for his retirement home overlooking Kitty Hawk Bay is apparent in his writings, and in the way a gray-blue reflection of the bay glints from his glasses as his eyes inevitably drift toward his broad glass doors.
``There's no place in the world I'd rather spend the rest of my life than right here,'' he says. ``Exactly here.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
Historic Historian
[Color] Cover and inside photographs by Drew C. Wilson.
Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
David Stock, 74, - historian, author, businessman, public official
and private agitator - has been an intellectual, political and
practical influence on the Outer Banks.
David Stick, whose dozen books place him at the forefront of Outer
Banks research, says he has ``mellowed some'' but he still has to
get things done the way he considers is right.
STICK'S BOOK LIST
Fabulous Dare (1949)
Graveyard of The Atlantic (1952)
The Outer Banks of North Carolina (1958)
The Cape Hatteras Seashore, with Bruce Roberts (1964)
Dare County: A History (1970)
Aycock Brown's Outer Banks (1976) (ed.)
North Carolina Lighthouses (1980)
An Artist's Catch: Watercolors by Frank Stick (1981 ed.)
Roanoke Island: The Beginnings of English America (1983)
Bald Head: A History of Smith Island & Cape Fear (1985)
The Ash Wednesday Storm (1987)
DAVID STICK
BORN: Dec. 21, 1919, Interlaken, N.J.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Elizabeth City High School, 1936;
attended Vermont Academy, 1936-37; attended University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1937-38.
JOURNALISM: Wrote for The Independent and The Daily Advance of
Elizabeth City, The Daily Tar Heel of UNC-Chapel Hill, The Coastland
Times, The Raleigh Times; edited for The Loudspeaker of Elizabeth
City High School, The Nags Tale, The Seashore News and The American
Legion Magazine; Assistant to radio commentator Fulton Lewis Jr. in
Washington; WWII combat correspondent for the U.S. Marine Corps.
BUSINESS: First licensed real estate broker on the Outer Banks,
1947; Partner, Kitty Hawk Enterprises, 1947-48; Partner, Kitty Hawk
Craft Shop, 1949-53; Manager, St. John Land Co., U.S. Virgin
Islands, 1953-54; Owner, Southern Shores Realty Co., 1956-70;
General Manager, Kitty Hawk Land Co., 1956-70; Owner, North Carolina
Books, 1962-72; Co-founder and President, Outer Banks Contractors
Inc., 1962-71; President, Southern Shores Motor Lodge Inc., 1964-74;
President, Lewis & Clark Explorer Maps Ltd., 1967-76; President,
Southern Shores Realty Co. Inc., 1970-76; President, Kitty Hawk Land
Co. Inc., 1970-76.
PUBLIC ACTIVITY: Has served as president of the Kitty Hawk Civic
Club, Dare Beaches Chamber of Commerce, Carolina Charter
Corporation, Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce, North Carolinians for
Better Libraries, Outer Banks Recreation Association, Historical
Society of North Carolina and Outer Banks Community Foundation; Has
been chairman of Wright Memorial Museum Committee, Kill Devil Hills
Zoning Board, Dare County Storm Rehabilitation Committee, Dare
County Board of Commissioners, Dare County Friends of The Lost
Colony, Dare County Erosion Control Board, Dare County Tourist
Bureau, Legislative Commission to Study Library Support, N.C.
Coastal Resources Commission; first mayor of Southern Shores; served
on Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission, America's 400th
Anniversary Committee, N.C. Marine Science Council.
AWARDS: Include: Distinguished Service Award, N.C. Public Library
Directors Association, 1984; Christopher Crittenden Memorial Award,
N.C. Historical Commission, 1984; Eure-Gardner Award, N.C. Coastal
Resources Commission, 1984; Citizen of the Year, Outer Banks Chamber
of Commerce, 1985;
North Caroliniana Society Award, 1987; Brown-Hudson Folklore
Award, N.C. Folklore Society, 1989.
FAMILY: Divorced, three sons
by CNB