It was December, and Dick and Muriel were still on Long Island. One day, Dick went into the city and ordered a television set for Muriel from the Liberty Music Shop in Manhattan, as well as equipment from Hammacher Schlemmer. Everything arrived in good order in Oyster Bay, but the stores inadvertently sent the bills to Dick’s Beekman Place address. Now Marianne had Muriel’s address and their cover was blown. Luckily, Dick and Muriel had already planned to leave town that day and drive south in a Nash Rambler Dick had recently purchased. But it would be even more difficult now for Dick to obtain a divorce on the grounds of Marianne’s infidelity with Rubirosa.
Journey to Mexico
They drove south toward Knoxville, Tennessee, where Strat Coyner was staying at the Andrew Johnson Hotel, which Dick owned. Dick wanted to see if he could make arrangements for a quick and easy Mexican divorce and Muriel would get her chance to meet Strat formally. On the way, they stopped for the night in Ocean City, Maryland.
Dick needed lightweight pants since he hadn’t prepared for the Southern heat. Muriel went into the shoddy little town to shop, but the best she could find were a pair that was two sizes too big for him. They were good enough for Dick and he yanked them on before they rushed out the door. Dick was antsy to get his hands on some more liquor. He wasn’t feeling great and it was his all-purpose cure.
They found a liquor store, where Muriel waited outside for Dick to pay for a few bottles. When he came out and turned around to walk toward her, his beltless trousers slid down to his knees… and he happened to be without underwear at the time. As traffic whizzed by, Dick stood there for a minute with the bottles in each hand, and then carefully knelt down, placed the bottles on the ground, and calmly pulled his pants back up. Muriel was doubled over with laughter. They immediately went back to the store to buy Dick a belt.
They finally got out of Ocean City and drove through the rolling Appalachians for two days to Tennessee. Dick pulled up to the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville, which was the tallest building in Tennessee at the time and the same hotel in which Hank Williams would spend his last night alive, not long after Dick and Muriel were there. Dick had purchased it on a whim in the early 1930s for almost nothing. When he had checked in, the clerk was rude to him. Dick figured if he owned the place he could have the clerk fired, so he did just that: bought the hotel and fired the clerk.
Dick introduced Muriel to Strat. But Strat, who was always on hand to clean up Dick’s messes, was more concerned with the business at hand. He advised Dick that it was legal to get a Mexican divorce, but probably risky at best. Dick insisted on looking into it, so after just one day, they bid Strat farewell and headed for Mexico, via Texas.
Dick grew more remote and distant as their journey wore on. He didn’t say much for the two days they were in Texas, and he stayed in his own room. Muriel wondered if he was second-guessing his decision to get a divorce. He insisted that he just didn’t feel good—but Muriel found out later he was drinking alone. Dick was an expert at closeted drinking. Muriel learned that when he was remote like this, he’d started one of his secret binges. She didn’t realize what she was up against—an average binge meant at least a bottle and a half of liquor per day.
Eventually, they drove across the border and trailed down to Mexico City. Dick continued to be angry, temperamental, and argumentative on the journey. Muriel was in for another disastrous trip with Dick. When they reached Mexico City, no rooms were available at the Great Hotel where they planned to stay, so they checked into a different one, but went straight back to the Great for drinks. Dick attempted to cash two traveler’s checks at the front desk to pay for the drinks, but the clerk refused to cash them unless they were staying there. Dick replied, “But these checks are acceptable anywhere.” But the receptionist still refused. Dick flew into a rage, ripped up the checks, and threw them in the receptionist’s face. Drunk and red-faced, Dick stormed out of the hotel.
Muriel followed Dick out onto the street, begging him to let it go. She was desperate to turn the sour evening around. Predictably, Dick hurled himself into a drinking rampage that lasted until four in the morning. Muriel was quickly becoming familiar with, and exhausted by, these late night, outburst-induced excursions. She wondered if Blitz and Marianne went through the same thing.
Dick never did get around to consulting with anyone in Mexico City about a divorce. The next day, they drove to Acapulco so they could relax on the beach and at least try to make a vacation out of the trip. Dick fought with Muriel the entire way. For the first time, he slapped her across the face.
Muriel’s jaw dropped. She jumped out of the car and leaned up against it, holding her head in tears. Unable to bear the thought that their relationship was taking this kind of turn, Muriel told herself that Dick was simply under too much stress with the divorce. He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This wouldn’t last. The drinking wouldn’t last after they were married.
The more Muriel invested in this fantasy, the more bitter she grew toward Marianne and any force that she blamed for Dick’s unhappiness.
Dick was apologetic and conciliatory the next day. Muriel accepted his apologies. She refused to let his behavior ruin the rest of their trip.
They managed to enjoy roasting hot Acapulco eventually, especially after Dick sobered up. They spent their days sunbathing and their nights talking until the roosters crowed at dawn.
CHAPTER 11
Return to Sapelo Island
1952
Since the wrangling in Mexico was in vain, Dick was eager to hit the water. Dick and Muriel ditched the Nash Rambler in Mexico and flew to South Carolina, joined Peter Barber and the White Heron in Charleston, and sailed for the holidays.
On Christmas Eve, they docked off the coast of Florida, and Dick’s oldest son, Josh, joined them for Christmas dinner onboard. Josh seemed elated to be in the presence of his father, who had rarely made himself available to him. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do after he finished his last term at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, which Dick had also attended. Josh only knew that he wanted to do something to make his father proud, and at least get his attention.
After the holidays, Dick told Muriel that he wanted to show her his prized possession, Sapelo Island. He said he wasn’t sure what to do with it, and he wanted her opinion.
Dick’s love for the island was evident. He had bought it in his twenties and repeatedly hid out there when he sought refuge. Muriel also realized that maybe the peace of the Georgia island was what Dick needed as he became ill more frequently. Perhaps it was time for Dick to slow down on the traveling and stay at the place he called home.
Sapelo Island, 1952
The minute they set foot on the island, Muriel felt as if she’d stepped back in time a hundred years.
The twelve-mile-long island was situated fifty miles south of Savannah, and contained 16,500 acres of usable land. Sapelo was the largest of Georgia’s Golden Isles and the fourth largest island on the Atlantic Coast. A third of the salt marshes on the East Coast could be found in the Golden Isles, home to fiddler crabs, herons, and egrets that occupied miles of undeveloped beaches. Sapelo contained thousands of acres of wildlife as well: whitetail deer, wild turkeys, hogs, cattle, and the Guatemalan chachalaca bird. The isolated land appealed to Dick’s desire to be surrounded by water—it was like one enormous yacht all its own, floating on the coastal sea—the ultimate captain’s lair.
As they drove down the dirt roadways from the loading dock, the path to the house was flanked by six-hundred-year-old oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. The house gradually peeked out from behind the trees until it opened up in its entire splendor. Maybe it was the fact that it had been closed for many months, or maybe it was the swift breeze that picked up around them, but Muriel found the mansion haunting and mysterious. The grounds were eerily quiet—there wasn’t a soul in sight. And the nineteenth-century, Spanish-style South End House stood before them like an old fortress—the only sign of life on an anci
ent land.
As they pulled up to the house, Italian-style gardens spread out before them. Five large columns guarded the hundred-foot patio, where Dick kept antique, Goya-tiled, wrought iron patio furniture that his sister Mary had imported from Spain. Two sets of steps led to a reflecting pool in the shape of a four-leaf clover, surrounded by oversized twelve-foot terra cotta jars scattered throughout the lawn. A long, symmetrical pathway cut through gardens, which were littered with azalea, gardenia, and wisteria. Beyond the garden, the path snaked into a small grove and emerged at a beachfront pool a mile away. Large nets hung between the pool and the ocean to protect swimmers from sharks.
When Dick and Muriel arrived that winter, the house had been closed down for months. Immediately upon his arrival, Dick looked happier than he had since Muriel met him. He exuded immense pride in his island treasure, and he talked about the many ideas he had for developing Sapelo over the years. He hoped Muriel would be the kind of partner to help him make a successful business happen there.
When Dick bought the island in the 1930s, he added his own personal touch, as the previous owners, Howard Coffin and Thomas Spalding, the island’s first, nineteenth-century plantation owner, had done before him. He hired an interior designer from Atlanta, Phillip Shutze, to remodel the house from top to bottom, renovated and rebuilt the farm buildings, and added new plumbing and air-conditioning—in fact, the South End House was one of the first homes in the South to have this luxury. Dick offered Muriel a personal tour of the grounds.
The main section of the house resembled Dick’s childhood home, Reynolda—a central hall flanked by two sets of wings. The main drawing room and entrance hall were marked with large central fireplaces. Pointing in each direction were hallways leading to the dining room, additional sitting rooms, two wood-paneled libraries, and Dick’s office.
Behind the central hall was the solarium, which overlooked Dick’s lovely heated indoor pool. Grecian pillars and statues surrounded the well, and floor-to-ceiling windows provided panoramic views of the back gardens. To the left and right of the pool room were two sets of bedrooms. Dick took one suite and designated the other, which had previously been occupied by Blitz and Marianne, for Muriel.
From the dining room, a hallway led to the all stainless steel kitchen, and a separate dining room, bedrooms, and bathrooms for the staff. From the main library a long, narrow hallway, also with floor-to-ceiling windows, led to another small living room, kitchenette, and nursery that Dick built for his children, with additional bedrooms and bathrooms for caretakers.
On the second level was a beautiful ballroom encircled by a rooftop terrace that opened to the back side of the house. The ballroom was painted to look like a circus tent, complete with painted circus animals and ceramic statuettes. The work was done by renowned Atlanta artist Athos Menaboni, whose murals of circus characters, birds, and images of Dick’s friends posing with pirate characters covered the ballroom, four rooms on the main level, the pool room, and the basement. The pirate murals were inspired by neighboring Blackbeard Island, which was named after the famous pirate and rumored to contain buried treasure. Dick had commissioned Menaboni to paint the murals twenty years earlier, when the Italian artist was a relative unknown. He later became one of the world’s most famous painters of birds. In addition to the Menaboni art, Dick kept one of Gilbert Stuart’s famous George Washington paintings in the house.
Underneath the house, tiny winding cellar stairs led to an adult playroom. The basement comprised a cozy lounge and another fireplace that partygoers used for roasting marshmallows. Behind the sitting room were a bowling alley, pool tables, a Ping-Pong table, and a large bar in the shape of a yacht. Tucked into a corner by the lounge was a wine cellar with a maze of side rooms that ran underneath most of the house, and one side room included a gun room where Dick kept hunting weapons, ammunition, and fishing tackle.
Down the road from the South End House, Dick hired designer Augustus Constantine to help him build a new stable and barn for his livestock and an office block for farm personnel and visiting scientists from the University of Georgia, whom Dick invited to study the salt marsh ecology on the island. To accommodate the guests, Dick let them use the forty loft spaces above the barn as well as additional apartments in the complex. He also bought a fleet of jeeps for everyone to use. Dick took Muriel up to a 250-foot attic that housed a full-size, hundred-seat movie theater complete with a professional-grade projector and perfect acoustics. When Dick first built it, he was interested in film and photography and had already made a handful of films. These days the theater was used to show Dick’s favorite movie, Gone with the Wind, which played once a week when Dick was in residence.
Near the barnyard were large carriage houses, stables, and fuel and oil tanks. A boathouse with a lift for Dick’s boats stood near the marsh side of the waterfront, and a larger, corrugated iron building housed Dick’s yachts.
A third of a mile down the beach path from South End House was a 250-foot greenhouse that Howard Coffin had built, which Dick had not maintained since the war. Some of the glass had been broken and Dick gave orders to a farmhand to have it redone for his new girlfriend. Muriel was an avid garden lover and promised to fill the greenhouse again.
A smaller, three-story, three-bedroom home named Azalea Cottage sat hidden in the woods near South End House. Dick said he often used the cottage when he needed to get away from everyone.
Dick had recently fortified the island with an electrical supply house and generator with enough electric units to supply power to the entire island. Dick named his small electric company Atlas Utilities and had three electricians on staff to maintain it. The utility line eventually included a radio microwave transmitter that connected to a tower at the marsh landing dock in Meridian and provided electricity to the island’s indigenous residents for the first time.
Many of the island’s residents were Dick’s employees—they worked as gardeners, maintenance men, cattle farmers, and gamekeepers—and he was committed to improving Sapelo’s conditions for them. He built a school for the local children and maintained a ferry, designed by Sparkman & Stephens, of course, to the mainland, which was the only means of transportation across Doboy Sound to Georgia. Dick kept a standing offer to send any of the island’s residents to vocational schools and training at his expense. Many of the residents were also expert shrimpers, fisherman, and duck and turkey hunters.
Since Dick had purchased the island, he turned Sapelo’s main industries to cattle farming and timber. The businesses provided employment for the residents of the island and helped to pay for operating and maintenance costs in keeping up the estate.
The rest of the island comprised an eclectic array of locations, old tabby (a building mixture of lime, sand, oyster shells, and water) ruins, lighthouses, cabanas and bathing beaches, a cemetery, additional cabins and swimming pools for the Sapelo Boys Camp, and Dick’s private hangar and two-mile-long airstrip. When he built the airstrip in 1934, it was the largest in the country. He stored his D-3 airplane in the hangar.
As Dick and Muriel concluded their tour and stood in front of the empty South End House, they agreed to keep Sapelo as their base after they got married. Dick loved his Southern roots, but he said that he would never live in Winston-Salem again.
For a moment, Muriel considered that maybe she and Dick should start somewhere new together, but Dick’s life and desires had been disrupted too many times by demanding wives and children, and she thought Dick should be in familiar surroundings. Muriel grew comfortable with the idea of leaving behind her own friends and interests and devoting herself to Dick in this strange place.
Muriel later acknowledged that agreeing to this might have been one of her gravest mistakes.
Dick wanted to sail again while the island was being reopened and prepared for their permanent return. He introduced Muriel to his manager, Frank Durant, and best farmhands: Fred Johnson, Martin Hall, and James Banks. Dick asked some of them to join him on their nex
t sailing trip.
Fred Johnson was one of Dick’s favorites. He was a kind young man who was one of Dick’s most devoted employees, and he often worked for Dick personally. He was tall and handsome and was married to a lovely woman named Flora, who, Dick said, was one of his “best ladies maids.” She took care of his boys when they were young and she was beloved by both Blitz and Marianne. Muriel was also impressed by Flora from the first time she met her and regretted that she wouldn’t have the chance to work with her because she was starting her own family. Lately, Dick had dramatically scaled back Flora’s duties because she had been in fragile health. Now, she and Fred were about to have a baby. Fred didn’t want to leave her to go sailing, but she assured him that she would be fine and urged him to accompany Dick.
Before they departed for the Caribbean, Dick said he wished to make Muriel the beneficiary of $200,000 worth of paid up insurance policies, to offer her a little security and to prove his commitment to her. Dick assured Muriel that the policies were only a fraction of the financial security he intended to provide her when they got married. Muriel found the insurance policies a little odd, but grand financial gestures like this were typical of Dick when he was courting a new woman. With Marianne, it was the deed to Sapelo Island on a napkin; to Muriel, it was life insurance.
After Dick finished the paperwork for the policies, they set sail for Nassau. Although Fred and Martin were excellent shrimpers, they were nervous about handling the yacht so far out to sea and didn’t really know how to navigate the open water. Fred insisted Dick stay at the bridge and navigate, so Dick couldn’t rest all night.
They stopped in Bimini’s, Hog Island, and Hope Town on Abaco Island. All along the way, Dick worked on the divorce paperwork. They decided to stay in Hope Town and explore the beaches for a week.
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