By Bill Kleppel
Fame and celebrity tend to spout from the same fountainheads of publicity. Actors, athletes, politicians, musicians, entrepreneurs, or artists of any stripe, are bestowed with accolades, whether deservedly or not, by the usual media guttersnipe.
A story going viral can make a person a household name in less than 24 hours. It’s all so amazing, remarkable, and at times, incredibly silly.
But let’s ask this question:
In the 21st Century, can a person get heaps of praise hoisted upon them for pulling dead bodies out of the Hudson River with grappling hooks?
Let me introduce you to Amaar "Dick" Wood.
In a Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle article published in 1915, Dick was commended for his 28 years of dedication and service for yanking over 150 corpses out of the drink.
The man was a legend!
From New York City to Albany, law enforcement officials called upon Dick to help pull these soggy unfortunates from their watery graves.
In the article, it states:
“There is no creek, lake or pond in Dutchess, Ulster, or surrounding counties where there has been a drowning that Dick hasn’t visited with his grappling irons.”
Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle; 17 August 1915
His "career" gained traction as a young man living at the Exchange Hotel with his parents and three older siblings (two brothers and a sister). Dick's father, Isaac H. Wood, was the last proprietor of the historic local establishment. It was torn down in 1899 to make way for a larger peer and a ticket office for the Hudson River Day Line.
The Exchange Hotel took on many patrons and boarders from its opening in 1834 until its closing. It was known for great river views, and its wrap-around porches. Its prime location on Main Street Landing welcomed steamships and freighters’ carrying hundreds of people a day.
The Exchange was also known as a site for rescue and salvage operations for maritime catastrophes, and received emergency calls for people in distress.
Poughkeepsie City Directory Ad 1856
The Wood brothers were avid swimmers and oarsmen. They were accustomed to aiding victims of shipwrecks, pleasure craft accidents, swimmers in peril, or people falling through ice. Sometimes the brothers were on hand when suicide victims were brought ashore.
They cultivated unorthodox skills that were outside the purview of many of their fellow citizens.
In our featured article, the journalist balances all of the heartbreak, calamity, and gore with florid prose on how much of a decent and humble humanitarian Dick was. This may well be true. Yet, the focus of the writing concentrates more on Dick’s job and his exploits.
For instance, he and his brothers developed keen instincts on why bodies would sometimes flow upstream instead of downstream, or how some bodies would float instead of sink.
The article even has a list of Dick’s “Don’ts for Amateurs.”
There are four of them on the list. My favorite is the first one:
“DON’T use dynamite. It never raised a body to the surface yet, and if it comes in contact with the form, it will disfigure it beyond recognition.”
Dick ruminates further on his expertise in great detail. The article gives an exceedingly long account of his grappling greatest hits. Victims’ names included!
Tell me dear reader, would it bring warmth and solace to your heart to read an article today listing your loved one as a conquest for a guy famous for scooping dead people from the sodden depths with large, sharp, metal implements?
This post isn’t entirely about the successes of the talented Mr. Wood. It’s about the unfathomable writing style of turn of the century news reporters, and what sold their papers during this era.
It’s always been the nature of tabloid journalism to adhere to the motto “if it bleeds, it leads.” This isn’t a new phenomenon. Media outlets over-saturated by scandal and gratuitous violence weren’t invented by the internet.
To get a better understanding of this lurid history from the more tawdry side of journalism, please visit our PPLD site and enter into the newspapers.com New York Collection, which can be accessed with your library card.
Not only are the newspaper databases on our site treasure troves for historical research, endless hours can also be wasted falling into rabbit holes of history’s weirdness, by using simple search words like: murder, catastrophe, insane, disaster, and the like!
p.s. Dick Wood continued with his gallant work until his own demise in 1923 at the age of 55. He and other family members are buried in Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery.
References
- “Dick Wood Has Remarkable Record in Tasks as A Grappler.” Com, Poughkeepsie Eagle News, 17 Aug. 1915, newscomny.newspapers.com/image/114130741/?pqsid=33CPwnA5aXh2NdpcZBVhtw%3A31459%3A1765253352.
- Underhill’s City of Poughkeepsie Directory and Advertiser. J.I. Underhill, 1856.