While Aycock Brown was serving as editor of The Beaufort (N.C.) News from 1935-41, he was constantly on the prowl to find new ways to expand business and commerce in Carteret County and the coastal region.
Somehow, Aycock Brown managed to get himself hired by the U.S. Army as a civilian consultant to promote activities associated with the construction and opening of Camp Davis Army Air Field at Holly Ridge in Onslow County in 1940-41. It was designed as a state-of-the-art anti-aircraft artillery training facility.
The new camp was named for Army Maj. Gen. Richmond Pearson Davis of Statesville, N.C., who served in World War I as a troop commander in France.
Representing a $16.8
million investment, Camp Davis was a massive construction project, consisting
of more than 3,000 buildings on 45,538 acres as well as two paved 5,000-foot
runways and two railroad spurs. Workers came by the hundreds, if not thousands.
Camp Davis was built in just five months. Troops started arriving in April 1941, and the facility was fully operational by June. At its peak, more than 20,000 officers and soldiers were stationed at Camp Davis.
Aycock Brown made sure that the news media got the story…and that the politicians got the credit…as he was paid to do.
A few months later, Japanese aircraft bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.
Aycock Brown immediately volunteered to serve his country, but he was too old, too skinny and too near-sighted to qualify for soldiering.
The Naval Intelligence Office took him on, however, as a special civilian agent to cover the North Carolina coast.
“Driving his old jeep along the shore, it was his job to photograph sinking ships, interview survivors and arrange proper burials for the dead,” wrote Lorraine Eaton of The Virginian-Pilot newspaper.
One eerie aspect of
Aycock Brown’s work was fingerprinting the bodies of any U.S., British and
Canadian sailors and merchant marine seamen that washed ashore during World War
II in order to identify them.
Eaton said: “This information was vital to national security, as the Germans could and did strip the identifications from bodies recovered off torpedoed ships to provide enemy spies with Allied identities.”
In the spring of 1942, Aycock Brown had his hands full, as two British ships were torpedoed by German U-boats and sank off the North Carolina coast only about a month apart.
On April 9, 1942, the San Delfino, a merchant marine oil tanker, was attacked by U-203 off Cape Hatteras, due east of Rodanthe. Twenty-eight men died, but 22 were rescued from the sinking ship and delivered to the port at Morehead City.
On May 11, 1942, the Bedfordshire, an armed trawler, while on patrol off Cape Lookout, was destroyed by U-558, killing all 37 hands aboard. The Bedfordshire had departed that very morning from Morehead City.
Over a period of several weeks after these two vessels sank, 10 bodies of British seamen were found. They washed ashore at various locations in Carteret, Dare and Hyde counties. Six were positively identified by Aycock Brown and authorities.
Carteret County historian
Rodney Kemp said Aycock Brown was an unsung war hero, in a sense, and many of
his “war stories” are preserved in collections at the History Museum of
Carteret County in downtown Morehead City.
After World War II,
Aycock Brown came back home to Carteret County to perform some of his “press
agentry magic” for clients such as the Sanitary Fish Market & Restaurant,
which was established in 1938 on the Morehead City waterfront. Aycock Brown and
Tony Seamon, co-founder of the Sanitary, had become fast friends.
In 1949, Jack Riley of The (Raleigh) News & Observer wrote: “Aycock Brown was the first writer to extoll the virtues of Tony Seamon’s seafoods at the Sanitary, and his squibs led to a growing clip file of free publicity the like of which has never been shared by another Tar Heel restaurateur.”
Riley said: “The grateful Seamon dropped a $350 press camera into his lap and launched Aycock Brown on his own….”
John Tunnell of Morehead (shown below), who started working at the Sanitary as a 15-year-old cook in 1945, said Capt. Tony and Aycock were like peas in a pod. The two of them could talk, laugh and connive for hours. They were born promoters.
“Aycock Brown got the first free piece of publicity for the Sanitary, an article that ran in the Greensboro Daily News,” Tunnell recalled.
A photograph of Aycock Brown in his Navy uniform also hangs on the “wall of fame” at the Sanitary, Tunnell said. “Next time, you’re there, ask someone to show it to you.”
One of the early advertising specialty items (perhaps developed by Seamon/Brown) promoted “Meet and Eat” at the Sanitary. It was a pocket-sized combination bottle opener/screwdriver in the shape of a fish. Each was stamped on the back with a four-leaf clover and the words “Good Luck.” These items were very popular with fishermen. Proceeds benefited the VFW Welfare Fund.
Tunnell concluded: “Aycock was a great person and a good publicity man. He did a lot for tourism in eastern North Carolina.”
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