The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1955-06-24
WAHAB
Continued from Page One)

nal ancestor to the island. The wa
ter also brought ashore his first
school books and little later on
life it set him forth on the journey
which was to lead him into ac-
counting and, eventually, into the
leadership of prosperous bust
ness enterprise.
Books From Surf
His books, a reader and a geog-
raphy, came to him from his uncle,
Thomas w. Howard, who found
them along with other books float
ing in the ocean surf after the
wooden ship, Pioneer, went
aground and broke up just off
Ocracoke in 1889.
He used the two shipwrecked
books for private lessons from the
Rev. w. E. Hocutt, a Methodist
minister, and while attending pub
lie school in the village. From 1899
to 1903 he lived at the north end
of the island, while his father was
assigned to the Cedar Hammock
Life Saving Station there, a sta
ton which is now more than 100
yards out in the ocean as a result
of beach erosion.
His island schooling done, STAN
ley spent the winter of 1904
catching fish, CLANS and oysters.
In June of 1904 he went to sea
aboard the menhaden schooner
Fanny Sprague, which fished the
Atlantic coast from Delaware to
Massachusetts. The next year
found him serving as a seaman on
Dredge Number Three of the Nor
folk Dredging Company, and jan
uary, 1906, found him back on his
beloved Island.
Clustering was hard that winter
but it led Stanley to his big break
in life. He was out after oysters
one day when a luxurious steam
yacht went ashore on Swash Shoal
in the sound. The captain came
ashore to sign up a couple of sea-
men to replace two had seen the
breakers in Ocracoke Inlet and
promptly decided the time had
come to abandon ship. Stanley
signed up and went aboard the
Tech, which was owned by T. Cole
man du Pont.
On a long southern cruise with
the industrial magnate, Stanley
now recalls, eve were not treated
like crew members but more like
guests"
Stanley's boss, T. Coleman du
Pont, persuaded him to enter bust
ness school, telling the Ocracoker
that the du Pont company employ.
ed many graduates of Goldey
Business College in Wilmington,
Del. Stanley took the du Pont adj
vice and invested his savings of
$475 in a business course there. He
finished the course a year later
and and was offered $40 a month
as clerk in the office of John J.
Raskob, who later became a multi
millionaire with du Point.
At the same time, Stanley re-
ceived an offer of $12 week with
provision company in Whining
ton and he took it instead of the
du Pont job. "This," he says now,
but without regret, twas perhaps
a bad decision"
He had his business education
and it led him to jobs with Swift
& Company and Wilson & Com
pany in Philadelphia and Atlantic
City, N. j., before he returned to
Qcracoke in 1910 to become prin-
cipal of the public school in the
same building where he had stud
led few years before. The next
year, he married his childhood
sweetheart, Fanny McWilliams,
who died a year later.
In 1912 Stanley served as prin-
cipal of the Lake Landing school
in Hyde County and the same year
he ran unsuccessfully for the Of
flee of county register of deeds.
When his first political endeavor
ended in failure, he borrowed SIS
from his father and departed Hyde
to seek his fortune elsewhere.