The coastland times., 1952-06-13


University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, where he was one of
the first directors of the North
Carolina Scholastic Press Institute
for high school journalists. After
a year of college he decided to
take to the road hitch-hiking and
circled the United States alone,
travelling more than 5000 miles.
Newspaper work has always in
terested him and when he was ID
he covered Nags Head news for the
Elizabeth City Independent, Dur
ing the summers he reported for
the Dare County Times and the
Elizabeth City Daily Advance and
started two resort weeklies, the
Nags Tale and the Seashore News.
After a stint as reporter in Ra-
leigh, he went to Washington as
assistant to radio commentator
Fulton Lewis, Jr., then served
three and a half years in the
Marine Corps, mostly as combat
correspondent in the South Pa
cific, covering such battles as
Leyte and Okinawa.
After the war he was associate
editor of the American Legion
Magazine in New York, but soon
found the call of the Carolina coast
too strong and returned to Dare
County and "the graveyard of the
! Atlantic" Having sold articles and
short stories to such magazines as
Outdoor Life, Hollands and Popu-
lar Science, he wanted to continue
h,s writing-and ore of the results
was book called "Faoulous
Eorc," viii h lie published him>tlf
in .G49 and which has sold more
than 5000 copies.
An Old Art Restored
Wh:le he was writing he neede'i
q s;t;d dy source of income, 50 he
and his wife, formtrly Phyllis
S apells, of Montreal, Canada, de-
ciled to open the Kitty Hawk
Craft Shop and use such locally
available materials as driftwood,
fish net, juniper wood and cypress
knees to make objects for sale to
the summer tourists. Stick likes
to make lamps out of driftwood
and cypress knees, "wind-sculp-
ture" out of sand-blown red cedar,
and surfboards from juniper wood.
Mrs. Stick is the fish net specialist,
making shopping bags, belts, Ian
yards, hammocks-and even bea-
MES with real painted starfish on
top. They also make ship models,
small models of the Wright Broth
ers' first plane, handmade dolls,
cork and shell ash trays, aprons.
hand-carved miniature ducks and
geese and cranes.
| The Craft Shop ties in directly
with another absorbing interest OF
the Stick family. They like young
people and took charge of a Youth
Club at Kitty Hawk. Then they
r were appalled, to discover that the
young people spent most of their
time driving around in cars, going
to the movies and looking at tele-
vision. They tried to show their
young friends that it was lot
more fun to do things together and
make things for themselves than
just looking at what somebody else
had done.
So now David and Phyllis design
many of the objects for their Craft
Shop-and their friends take over
and make them in larger numbers
for sale. When the youngsters
wanted to buy a volleyball net, the
Sticks found that only two mem
bers of the club had ever nd-tied
nets themselves - although their
fishermen ancestors had been ex-
perts at it. But now the boys and
girls of Kitty Hawk and Nags
Head have learned to make their
own fish-nets and many other OBJ
jects that sell quickly and profit
able at the shop. Incidentally, Mrs.
Stick is chairman of the Dare
County Council for Youth, which
has helped start seven youth
clubs in the county.
Another important member OF
the Stick family is David's father,
Frank Stick, who was for many
years commercial illustrator for
such magazines as the Saturday
Evening Post, the Ladies Home
Journal and Outdoor Life, edited
Field and Stream for time when
he was 10, and has recently done
a series of East Coast fish in water
colors. He has contributed a most
attractive group of pen and ink
.Ixo4oloe 70 i1l,,ctrofo naUiH'S hO1E