David Dick spent nearly two decades as a globetrotting CBS correspondent during the golden age of television news. Then he moved home to Bourbon County and launched several new careers.
Dick became a sheep farmer, the founder of two weekly newspapers and a University of Kentucky journalism professor and department head. He also became an author, publishing 14 books that attracted loyal readers across Kentucky and beyond.
Beginning with The View from Plum Lick in 1992, Dick wrote 11 books on his own and another three with his wife, Eulalie “Lalie” Dick. The topics ranged from his adventures covering wars in Latin America to his 17-year battle with prostate cancer.
But most of the books were about the Dicks’ beloved Kentucky, including: Kentucky: A State of Mind (2005); Rivers of Kentucky (2001); Home Sweet Kentucky (1999); Let there be Light: The Story of Rural Electrification in Kentucky (2008); and Jesse Stuart – The Heritage (2005).
“I think David’s contribution was his writing and language and how he applied it to the state … what his senses told him,” the late Carl West, editor of the Frankfort State Journal and founder of the Kentucky Book Fair, said after Dick died at age 80 on July 16, 2010. “He’ll be remembered for his literary effort.”
David Barrow Dick was born Feb. 18, 1930 in Cincinnati. His father, Samuel, a physician, died when he was 18 months old. His mother, Lucile, moved home with her three young children to Bourbon County, where five generations of her family had lived.
Dick, an Eagle Scout, graduated from North Middletown High School in 1948 and majored in English at the University of Kentucky. His studies were interrupted by U.S. Navy service during the Korean War. He completed a master’s in English literature at UK in 1964.
Before joining CBS News in 1966, Dick worked six years for WHAS radio and TV in Louisville. He was posted at CBS bureaus in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Dallas and spent a year as the Latin America bureau chief in Caracas, Venezuela. He won an Emmy for his coverage of the 1972 assassination attempt on presidential candidate George Wallace, but is perhaps best known for his coverage of the 1978 mass suicide of more than 900 cult followers of the Rev. Jim Jones in Guyana.
“We met one another in airports for a long time and all we could think about was moving back to Kentucky,” Lalie Dick said. “It was the dream that kept us going.”
After retiring from CBS in 1985, Dick joined UK’s journalism faculty, which he led from 1987 to 1993. He was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1987 and UK’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 2000. Dick started newspapers in Montgomery and Bourbon counties that won many awards but didn’t survive long against established competitors. Beginning in 1989, he wrote a column “The View From Plum Lick” for more than two decades in Kentucky Living, the magazine of Kentucky’s rural electric cooperatives. Many of those columns were reprinted in his first book.
Dick was married to Rose Dick from 1953-1978. They had three daughters — Deborah, Catherine and Nell — and a son, Sam, a longtime broadcast journalist in Lexington. In 1978, Dick married Lalie Dick, a Revlon sales executive from Mississippi whose family had Bourbon County roots. They had a daughter, Ravy.
Soon after returning to Kentucky, the Dicks took up residence on a farm one of his ancestors bought in 1799 and lived in a pre-1850 house built by a great-great uncle. With several hundred acres along Plum Lick Road, the couple raised a large flock of sheep.
When Dick wrote his first book, the University Press of Kentucky told him it would take two years to publish, Lalie Dick said. He couldn’t wait that long. So the couple started Plum Lick Publishing Inc., which produced most of their books. “We started putting cartons of books in cars and going places,” she said.
The university press published Dick’s historical novel, The Scourges of Heaven in 1998.
“He was always in love with words and how they went together and how descriptive they were and what they meant; it was just in his DNA,” Lalie Dick said. “He loved Kentucky with his whole being.”
Selected Bibliography
- Outhouse Blues (2009)
- A Journal for Lalie: Living Through Prostate Cancer (2008)
- Let there be Light: The Story of Rural Electrification in Kentucky (2008)
- Jesse Stuart – The Heritage (2005)
- Follow the Storm: A Long Way Home (2002)
- The Scourges of Heaven: A Novel (1998)
- The Quiet Kentuckians (1996)
- A Conversation with Peter P. Pence (1995)
- Peace at the Center (1994)
- Follow the Storm (1993)
- The View from Plum Lick (1992)
C-authored with Lalie Dick
- Kentucky: A State of Mind (2005)
- Rivers of Kentucky (2001)
- Home Sweet Kentucky (1999)
Awards
- Emmy Award (1972)
- Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame (1987)
- University of Kentucky Hall of Distinguished Alumni (2000)
- Thomas More Medallion, Thomas More College (2003)
- Honorary doctorates from Eastern Kentucky University, Cumberland College
