Editor's Note: This month Coastwatch recognizes three 

 outstanding coastal Carolinians. In their own ways, they 

 have helped shape the North Carolina coast. Author 

 David Stick recorded the coast's past and molded its 

 future through his progressive thinking in coastal 

 management. Fireball Lena Ritter incited shellfishermen 

 to save their pristine harvesting waters from develop- 

 ment. And fisherman Murray Bridges "busted" the soft- 

 shell crab industry wide open. 



By Sarah Friday 



David Stick must have a time filling out forms. 



There's never much room for the North Carolina his- 

 torian, businessman, developer, civic leader, coastal advo- 

 cate, book lover and writer to fill in the line marked 

 "Occupation." 



As one of the state's most renowned coastal authorities, 

 the trim, balding Stick is modest about his success. 



He's really too busy to think about it. 



He just published a book, you know. His eleventh. He's 

 head of a local foundation in Kitty Hawk, on the Amer- 

 ica's 400th Committee, and as always, involved in land 

 use planning. 



He's moving from Southern Shores to Kitty Hawk. 

 Then there's the history center going up in his honor- 

 complete with 6,000 volumes from his own library. 



And this is retirement. 



Stick's progressive thinking, hard work and straight- 

 shootin' style keep him ahead of the game. 



A love of the coast and its resources incited him to 

 play. 



Born in 1919, Stick grew up on an Outer Banks few 

 people know now. His father Frank, a conservationist and 

 an illustrator, shared the sand and water with his son, 



instilling in him an appreciation that would endure. 



He had "a love of the outdoors and the amazing ability 

 to paint in a very realistic manner the animals he saw," 

 Stick recalls. 



Evidence hangs on nearly every wall in Stick's home. 



Drawing on his pipe, Stick also remembers how much 

 his father loved sports— and how much he hated them. 



The younger Stick got bored fishing and cried when he 

 shot a duck the first and last time he went hunting. 



He liked boats, though, and gogglefishing. 



Yes, gogglefishing. 



When Stick was 14, a visiting Olympic athlete showed 

 him how to wear the little wooden goggles made in Japan 

 and to spear fish. 



In three years. Stick brought in more than 1,000 fish 

 and a first place prize in the world's first gogglefishing 

 tournament in Beaufort. 



The hobby sparked his interest in shipwrecks. It also 

 led him to one of his closest allies and lifelong friends, 

 Aycock Brown. The nationally known photographer 

 publicized the Outer Banks for more than 30 years. 



That included the world's first gogglefishing 

 tournament. 



'At that point, I realized what Aycock Brown could do," 

 Stick says. 



For years afterward, the two collaborated on books, 

 articles and special projects. 



Stick's writing career began two years after the tourney 

 with a stint as editor of the high school newspaper. 



Writing was all he ever really wanted to do. 



In fact, he loved it so much it kept him from 

 graduating from the University of North Carolina at 

 Chapel Hill. 



His freshman year, the young reporter stayed so busy 

 writing for the Daily Tar Heel and directing the N.C. 

 Scholastic Press Institute that he flunked out. 



And he'd been elected to the student council, defeating 

 Skipper Bowles, a classmate who became a prominent 

 North Carolina politician. 



But "I never regreted it," Stick says. 



He later joined the U.S. Marine Corps as a combat cor- 

 respondent during World War II, then returned to an 

 editorship at The American Legion Magazine in New 

 York. 



By 1947, he had had enough of the big city. He 

 returned to North Carolina and vowed to write only what 

 he wanted. 



In 1952, Stick published one of his first books, and 

 probably his most famous, Graveyard of the Atlantic. 



But he needed to do more to support his new wife and 

 their family-to-be. 



So he joined his father's business as a developer in 

 Southern Shores, opened a craft shop and became the 

 first licensed real estate broker on the Outer Banks. 



Land was plentiful ... and cheap. Choice lots went for 

 $100 an acre. 



"I had an awareness of the natural environment, but 

 not of the ecology," Stick says. 



