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| Fairleigh Stanton Dickinson Sr. 1866-1948 |
"Fairleigh Stanton Dickinson Sr., of Core Creek, was one of Daddy's closest friends. He came into Daddy's office and said, "Will, I don't think I'll ever get anywhere looking at the asshole of a mule for the rest of my life." My father helped Fairleigh purchase a small sailing vessel, which he used to transport watermelons to Norfolk through the newly opened canal. Fairleigh made enough money to go to New York. Later, on a train west he met Henry Becton from Kinston. They got off the train in Cleveland, returned to Rutherford, New Jersey and started Becton-Dickinson Medical Supplies, which soon became a Fortune 500 company.
"Fairleigh and wife Grace had one son, Fairleigh Stanton "Dick" Dickinson, Jr., who was my age. The family regularly spent summers in Beaufort at the Davis House or the Inlet Inn and were guests in our home. During the 1932 polio epidemic in New Jersey, Mr. Dickinson called my father and asked, "Will, can Dick come live with you and attend Beaufort High School during this epidemic?" Dick left the New York Military Academy at Croton-on-Hudson for our public school. Mother converted our library-music room into a bedroom, which meant our only downstairs toilet was no longer ours—it was a private bath for the new member of our family, at least for a while.
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| Headstone - F.S. Dickinson Jr. 1919-1996 Tower Hill Cemetery Edgartown, Massachusetts |
"Daddy gave Dick his first boat with a big Evinrude outboard motor. We went everywhere in this boat. As the sun came up, we would be on our way to catch the blues while they were running near the stone jetties off Shackelford Banks this side of Beaufort Inlet. With simple silver plugs just above the hook, on regular cotton line, without rod and reel, we could easily land hundreds of fish in less than an hour as the blues tried to feed on jumping minnows that filled the water for a brief period. Dick was always the "Captain" and I was "First Mate."
"Over the years it was Dick's Daddy, Col. Dickinson, who gave his son bigger and bigger boats. By the mid 1930s, they included a 56-foot Matthews motor yacht named Tar Heel, of Beaufort, N.C. (When war came, Dick turned his boat over to the Coast Guard and he commanded a cutter which led the way onto the beaches off Guadalcanal.) For the rest of the 1930s we extended our playgrounds to Havana, Key West and Bimini in the British West Indies. We also helped start big game fishing in the Gulf Stream, using rods and reels in Carteret County, just 35 miles off Beaufort Inlet and Cape Lookout."
- Borden Mace
