C. Wyatt Dickerson, Businessman and man about Washington, Is dead at 92

C. Wyatt Dickerson, a dapper investor and actual estate developer who, along his spouse, Nancy Dickerson, glittered at the top of the Washington A-list from the Kennedy era to Reagan’s, died on Tuesday in Washington. He become ninety two.

His son John Dickerson, the host of “Face the country” on CBS, said the demise turned into caused by complications of esophageal cancer.

in the course of their 20-12 months marriage, Wyatt and Nancy Dickerson were the Gerald and Sara Murphy of the bloodless battle established order: wealthy bons vivants who witnessed records over candlelight at dinner parties, inaugural balls or even 1970s discothèques.

The couple dined privately with Lyndon and lady fowl Johnson the night after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. They held a dinner for Ronald and Nancy Reagan and their California buddies for the duration of the 1981 inaugural weekend at their storied 22-acre estate, Merrywood. Overlooking the Potomac, Merrywood had belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy’s stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss, and it was where John Kennedy, then a senator, is stated to have written his Pulitzer Prize-prevailing e-book, “Profiles in courage.”

each Dickersons had a knack for making pals in excessive places: She was a glamorous network information correspondent, and he become a businessman with panache. Ms. Dickerson, who died in 1997, worked as a congressional aide early in her profession and had befriended senators like Kennedy and Johnson.

She married Mr. Dickerson in 1962, and he hooked up himself in Washington society by way of snapping up Merrywood, restoring its grandeur and filling it with eu antiques. He bought off a number of the belongings to construct townhouses — a complicated deal that become eased at the side of the help of the secretary of the indoors, Stewart Udall, a chum of the couple’s.

There had been masses of events and lots of electricity couples in those days, but driving round town in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce convertible, Mr. Dickerson and his stylish spouse stood out. She turned into the movie star, however he changed into a skillful co-big name, captivating the politicians his spouse covered as well as the waiters who poured their liquids.

He grew to become his flair for hospitality into a sideline enterprise. In 1973, he orchestrated the outlet of the Palm restaurant in Washington. In 1975 he changed into a founding member of Doubles, the personal membership inside the Sherry-Netherland inn in the big apple. And that equal yr, he opened the Pisces membership in Washington, which operated for almost two decades. In 1982, he opened the Chinoiserie eating place on M avenue in Georgetown.

long before the Reagans got here to town, Mr. Dickerson brightened Merrywood events with a sprinkling of Hollywood, inviting stars like Jack Benny and Kirk Douglas and others he had met as a younger actor in la after international conflict II.

Mr. Dickerson himself had by no means been a celebrity in Hollywood: He played uncredited stroll-on elements in movies like “without Reservations,” which starred John Wayne and Claudette Colbert, and “greenback Privates Come domestic,” with Abbott and Costello. however he become a participant. He lived with the actress Nina Foch, and ran round metropolis with different younger actors like Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Peter Lawford and Blake Edwards (who went directly to a directing career).

Claude Wyatt Dickerson Jr. become born on Aug. 25, 1924, and grew up in Roanoke, Va., the son of a druggist and a schoolteacher. He evolved a flavor for the finer matters at a young age. whilst a friend teased him approximately his attire, he went to paintings in a garb shop, obtaining a sense of fashion that stayed with him even thru the generation of safari jackets and amusement suits.

A football scholarship got him to Duke university in 1942, but with global warfare II underway, he enlisted in the navy. although he become given a scientific discharge in 1944, he never finished university, and headed to Hollywood to pursue a film profession.

After his father died, he moved again to Roanoke in 1948 and married a high faculty classmate, Ruth Fowler Johnston. An advertising task took him to big apple, wherein he entered the banking world.

He returned to Virginia inside the Fifties and in Leesburg founded Pilot economic, an investment commercial enterprise catering to Pan Am pilots who were making the most of the air journey increase. as the business made him rich he offered assets and made other, eclectic investments, along with the purchase of Cherry break, a smooth drink organization, and an interest in the Connecticut telephone and electric powered corporation.

His first spouse died of most cancers in 1960, leaving him with 3 school-age daughters. He met his second wife through friends eager to marry her off. Ms. Dickerson become Nancy Hanschman then, the primary female to be made a community news correspondent, and defiantly unmarried on the age of 34.

Mr. Dickerson moved speedy after their first date, arranging for her to stay on the Savoy while in London and sending a Bentley to select her up at Heathrow. He observed up a few days later and wooed her in museum galleries and with hard-to-score theater tickets.

once they married in 1962, Lyndon Johnson, then vp, turned into one of the hosts of a celebration of their honor. (The Dickersons again the choose in 1968, giving a good-bye celebration on the Whisky a go pass in Washington for the college-certain first daughter Lynda bird Johnson and her date, the actor George Hamilton.)

Ms. Dickerson’s network profession ebbed after President Johnson chose not to seek re-election, however the couple’s social whirl held robust via the Nixon management and past. The party ended after they divorced in 1983. They sold Merrywood soon after.

Mr. Dickerson’s commercial enterprise endeavors were marked by means of highs, just like the Merrywood coup, and similarly splashy lows, such as a partnership with Tongsun Park, a Korean lobbyist who was on the center of a 1976 Washington bribery scandal.

a few accurate did come from the deal: After his divorce, he took up with Tandy Dickinson, a socialite who have been Mr. Park’s female friend inside the Seventies. She and Mr. Dickerson married in 1994.

similarly to his spouse and his son John, he's survived by his daughters, Elizabeth Sinclair, Ann Dickerson Pillion and Jane Dickerson; another son, Michael; thirteen grandchildren; and four excellent-grandchildren.

“He made absolutely everyone experience like they have been the middle of the birthday celebration, no matter how insignificant they have been,” John Dickerson wrote in an e mail. “This isn’t to mention that he didn’t admire the well-known and the effective. He turned into simply gracious. a few days before he died he changed into nevertheless presenting us a seat in his health center room, apologizing for not being able to offer us something nicer.”