Bill and Donna Dicks carving designs into a candle lantern in the 1970s While Bill was primarily interested in learning how to carve, he also wanted to see if he could make a living using his hands. Little did he know that he would later teach the only carving class offered at ASU at that time. During his first semester, he discovered pottery and ended up taking 27 graduate hours in ceramics, specializing in pottery candle lanterns. That fall, a friend asked him to route a sign for her landlord as a Christmas gift. A year later, Bill was a professional sign carver and potter. On December 31, 1971, Bill was laying out signs for the residence halls at Lees-McRae College when Donna, who was eight and a half months pregnant with their first child, told him it was time to go to the hospital. “I was so cool,” said Bill. “I just kept laying out signs while she got ready to go. When we returned from the hospital, I started carving the signs only to discover that I’d misspelled every one of them. So I hadn’t been as focused as I thought!”
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High Country Magazine
July 2014
The three-story workshop located in Banner Elk that Bill and several friends built in the 1970s
After graduation in 1972, Bill opened his sign shop and pottery studio in a building halfway up Beech Mountain. At that time, all his signs were routed; during the off season, he produced pottery candle lanterns which were sold at craft fairs. “We attended a lot of craft shows back then. I would route signs on the spot and sell candle lanterns from the same booth,” Bill said. “On occasion, I would take my potter’s wheel for demonstration purposes. I would help children work on the wheel by taking their hands in mine; together we would make a pot. I knew it was a good demonstration when they thought they had done all the work themselves.” During one demonstration, a young girl with severely gnarled hands watched intently from her wheelchair as Bill worked with other children. She and her mother stayed a long while, observing the process. “Would you like to try it?” Bill asked her. “Oh, no. I couldn’t do that,” she responded while her mother watched from behind the wheelchair. “Try it. I think you can do it,” he encouraged. They moved her wheelchair close to the potter’s wheel. With Bill guiding her small, curved hands, they made a pot which he cut off the wheel and handed to her on a paper plate. She was so excited that she actually hugged the pot, declaring “I knew I could do it!” In the fall of 1977, Bill moved from the rented shop on Beech Mountain to the three story workshop that he still uses today. “Two friends helped me build the shop; none of us had any construction experience,”
said Bill. “We used 31 beams from an old fertilizer plant which we stood on end. We built the shop around them in three months, using a sledgehammer and chainsaw. I’ve had people say it’s the ultimate workshop, the kind they’d like to have when they retire, so I figure I retired about forty years ago!” Three or four years after moving into his new workshop, Bill expanded his business to include sandblasted signs. Donna said, “Bill progressed from routing and hand carving to sandblasting signs. Now he does beautiful pieces that are often combinations.”
The River Rock Legacy
Though most of his time is spent carving signs and making pottery, Bill has had the opportunity to be part of some very special projects, one of which began with his son, Dave, joining the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division right after graduating high school . “I told him that if he was going to jump out of airplanes, then we were making our first jump together,” said Bill. “A month before he left for active duty, we went sky diving. Two years later, Dave was selected to become a member of The Golden Knights, the Army’s elite demonstration parachute team. Now he’s logged over 3,000 jumps and I have nearly 700.” From Dave’s involvement with the parachute team, came a unique opportunity for Bill to help honor our nation’s fallen soldiers. Before 9/11, Staff Sgt. Pedro Munoz, a Special Forces soldier of 17 years, was on the parachute team with Dave. On 9/11, Pedro was hiking the Appalachian Trial with a fellow team member. Two days after