RIP: Actor Dick Dickerson dies at 92

Claude Wyatt Dickerson Jr., real estate developer, entrepreneur, restaurateur and longtime Washington resident died today at age 92 at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center of Washington, D.C. The cause of death was complications associated with esophageal cancer. During his 56 years in Washington, Dickerson developed real estate in Loudoun county, Virginia, Ashland, Virginia and McLean, spearheading the Merrywood on the Potomac development in the late 1960s. He helped start numerous Washington clubs and restaurants.

In 1963 he co-founded the Federal City Club, started in opposition to the whites-only policy of the Metropolitan and Chevy Chase clubs. In 1973, he orchestrated the opening of the Palm restaurant in Washington, D.C. In 1975 he was a founding member of Doubles in New York and in in the same year opened The Pisces Club in Washington, which operated for nearly twenty years in Georgetown. In 1982 he opened the Chinoiserie restaurant on M street in Georgetown. Dickerson's second wife was the late television journalist Nancy Dickerson Whitehead. Married in 1962, when Nancy Hanschman was a correspondent for CBS news, their twenty year marriage put them at the center of Washington's power and social scene. They hosted parties for Washington's most influential as well as national celebrities like Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart who Dickerson had known from his days as an actor in Hollywood.

Dickerson purchased the Georgian-style brick home overlooking the Potomac river in 1964 from the Auchincloss family. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis once lived there and John F. Kennedy recuperated on the third floor from back surgery. The estate, which overlooks the Potomac river, is now owned by AOL founder Steve Case. In 1981 president-elect Ronald Reagan attended a party at Merrywood to kick off his inaugural weekend. The Dickersons' marriage ended in divorce in 1982.

Dickerson was born in Roanoke Virginia on August 25th, 1924 to Claude Wyatt Dickerson and Bessie Mae Kirkwood Dickerson. His father was a druggist, eventually owning his own drug stores. His mother was a teacher. As a child he boxed in the makeshift ring his father built in the empty lot near his house. He won piano and marble competitions and was an Eagle Scout. At his father's store, he occasionally worked the soda fountain and delivered prescriptions. One summer before college he worked for the Norfolk and Western Railroad. In high school he devoted himself to football. In 1942, he attended Duke university on a football scholarship. After enlisting in the Navy he attended Tulane and UCLA to train to be an officer. He was honorably discharged from the Navy in 1944 for medical reasons.

In 1945 Dickerson acted on stage and in Hollywood in Without Reservations, with John Wayne and Claudette Colbert and Buck Privates Come Home with Abbott and Costello. He dated and lived with film star Nina Foch and became friends with other young actors like Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Peter Lawford and Blake Edwards. In the fall of 1948 he married the late Ruth Fowler Johnston of Roanoke, a professional singer from Martinsville and New York who had also attended Jefferson High School in Roanoke with him. The couple eventually settled in Leesburg, Virginia, where they lived with their three daughters at Roxbury Hall. On July 13, 1960, Ruth Dickerson died after a long battle with cancer. Dickerson is survived by his wife of 22 years, Tandy Dickerson, his sister Betty and his daughters Elizabeth Sinclair of Washington, D.C., Ann Dickerson Pillion, of Villanova, PA and Jane Dickerson of St. Davids, PA as well as his sons Michael Dickerson of Atlanta and John Dickerson of Washington, D.C.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtontimes/obituary.aspx?n=Claude-Wyatt-Dickerson&pid=182831833