Queer Places:
Beach Walk, Yaphank, NY 11980
Union Cemetery
Sayville, Suffolk County, New York, USA
Charles P. Dickerson (December 28, 1902 - October, 1986) was the author of A History of the Sayville Community, Including Bayport, Bohemia, West Sayville, Oakdale, and Fire Island.
Charles Prescott Dickerson was the son of John Prescott Dickerson (1880-1963) and Delcie B. Newton (1879-1937). Charles (Charley) Dickerson, the son of a Sayville real estate entrepreneur, went to Harvard. He stayed in Sayville all his long life, living with his sister Florrie and her husband Lloyd Pugh, selling insurance and ultimately taking over his father’s business. He was drawn to the theater and in later life was the treasurer of Sayville’s amateur theater company. Dickerson owned a house on Beach Walk in Cherry Grove, whose first historian he became. But a local gay like Charley Dickerson was only mildly disturbing to the family people. He was familiar, contained, a known quantity. Charley’s eccentric father had been “weirder yet . . . so Charlie’s got a right to be—different,” said Catherine Richter. “He’s a local person. . . . People aren’t crazy about him, but they don’t hate him . . . everybody’s kind of fond of him. He’s like the very sweetest village dog that everybody knows that sits in front of the post office.”
My published books:
