 OWAA Legends
Charley Dickey: Renaissance Man
By H. Lea Lawrence
For a long time I didn’t know his name was Charley.
To me, it was “Chum.”
The reason for this is that, when my family moved to Morristown, Tenn., in 1944
and I met David Dickey, who became my best friend, he always talked about his
older brother, “Chum,” a naval torpedo bomber pilot on duty in the Pacific
theater. “Chum” had won the Navy Cross for sinking one of the two largest
Japanese battleships. This top honor came in addition to his three Distinguished
Flying Crosses and two Air Medals. David was immensely proud of him.
But why “Chum”? David says that the nickname originated when he, Charley and his
mother moved to Morristown after his father’s death. During the summers when
Charley was home from college, he served as an assistant scoutmaster. Not having
known any of the kids previously, he called everybody “Chum,” just as others
might use the term “Buddy.” Of course, the Scouts turned it around and applied
it to him, and it stuck.
The Morristown years were the beginning of many teenage adventures. Charley and
a friend, Ben Moore, were fans of Mark Twain. They built a 16-foot,
flat-bottomed boat named Sea Biscuit, christened it with a bottle of 7-Up and
embarked on the Holston River for points south. This was before most of the
Tennessee Valley Authority dams were built. They sailed and paddled through
Knoxville and Chattanooga and into Alabama before hitting the biggest
reservoirs, where they struggled until the end of summer. They terminated their
voyage at the point where the river passes through Alabama, Mississippi and
Tennessee. He and Ben sold the boat to some fishermen and hopped freight trains
to get back home.
Another summer, Charley worked the wheat harvest in Kansas then moved on to
building irrigation ditches in Colorado and working as a ranch hand. When he was
home in the summer, which wasn’t often, he worked as a soda jerk, as a laborer
unloading produce from railroad cars and as operator of a turning machine at a
machine shop. During the first school year, he attended Carson-Newman College at
nearby Jefferson City, then he went to the University of New Mexico at
Albuquerque to study geology. That’s also where he learned to fly.
When World War II broke out in Europe, Charley wanted to get into the action.
America wasn’t involved yet, so he headed for Canada to join the Royal Canadian
Air Force. Before he was out of the country, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,
and he got off the train and joined the U.S. Navy. By the time the war ended,
Charley had three tours of duty, serving on the Lexington and the Enterprise,
flying Grumman Avengers.
After the war, he finished his college work at the University of Tennessee and
then worked for two years as assistant state geologist, as the editor of the
Robertson County Times and as a reporter for the Knoxville Journal.
In the late 1950s, he went to New Haven, Conn., and worked in customer sales for
Winchester. Later he was assigned to Greensboro, N.C., as a sales
representative. Next, he was promoted to southern district manager, based in
Atlanta, but he was recalled by the Navy to serve in the Korean War before he
could assume the position.
Upon returning to the states, he was a reporter for the Clearwater (Fla.) Sun
then rejoined Winchester as a field representative for the newly formed Sporting
Arms and Ammunition Manufacturer’s Institute (SAAMI), where he worked to
establish private shooting preserves. He worked in that capacity out of
Harrisburg, Pa., Greenwood, S.C., and both Fresno and Shell Beach, Calif.
Meanwhile, SAAMI had transformed into the National Shooting Sports Foundation,
and Charley was asked to serve as executive director in New York City and
Riverside, Conn.
He resigned that job in 1972 and moved with his wife, Bunty, and her three
children from a previous marriage to Tallahassee, Fla., to try full-time
freelancing for outdoor magazines. He was a columnist for the Tallahassee
Democrat and soon began to win national attention as a writer and photographer.
His byline, as well as the byline of Sam Cole, his pseudonym for the
back-of-the-book column in Petersen’s Hunting, “Backtracking,” was known to
readers across America.
I first met “Chum” when he came home following World War II, but we became best
acquainted when he was with Winchester. We hunted and fished together. One of
his favorite sports was hunting crows, which he claimed, tongue in cheek, had
both Yankee and Southern accents. In 1950, he, David, a friend, Bob Lowe and I
spent an unforgettable week on the south end of the Appalachian Trail in the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park. That trip never ceased to be a subject of
conversation when we were together.
I miss this Renaissance man with the droll humor, partly because our friendship
extended back more than 50 years, but also because he was a mentor who helped
both David and me get into freelance writing. You should have heard him scold
us!
H. Lea Lawrence was born in Hammond, Ind., June 8, 1930, and grew up in
the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.
Back to Legends
Index Page |
