He was a lawyer, Vietnam veteran, military judge, retired Marine Corps colonel, commercial fisherman, photographer, volunteer, mentor, advocate and, to some, an adversary.
Above his extensive resume, above all else, Rick Dove was a family man, one whose devotion to his wife, children and grandchildren ran as deep as the waters he fought decades to protect.
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Dove, one of the first Riverkeepers in the Southeast and the original Neuse Riverkeeper, died Aug. 22. He was 86.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Cotten Funeral Home in New Bern, the riverfront city Dove called home. Visitation will be held an hour prior to the service.
In professional circles, Dove was regarded as a no-nonsense, straight shooter who unabashedly took on any industry, whether it was concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, or wastewater treatment plants, responsible for polluting the Neuse River.
Advocating for water quality protections is a hard job, he would say. Polluters are powerful, well-connected and well-funded, he advised. Fighting for clean waterways requires thick skin and unyielding tenacity, he stressed.
“One of the things I remember most about Rick is that he did not sugarcoat things,” said Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider. “He said exactly how things are and that was incredibly beneficial for the folks who worked alongside him. We have a lot of tough Riverkeepers out there today because of how he taught.”
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His connection to the water spanned back to boyhood, when he dreamed of being a fisherman.
Dove’s shot at doing just that came in the mid-1980s when he retired after 25 years in the Marine Corps.
He wasted no time tucking away his spit-shined shoes for what he described in a Sound Rivers publication as “the dirtiest clothes I could find and became a commercial fisherman.”
“Things were great until about 1990,” Dove said.
That was the year he and his son, Todd, who fished with him, started to notice their catch sick with sores.
Dove got out of the commercial fishing business. He couldn’t justify selling sick fish, he’d later tell people.
He returned to practicing law, opening R.J. Dove and Associates offices in Havelock and Jacksonville in 1991. Two years later, a job listing advertised in a local newspaper caught his eye.
It was a newly created position called Neuse Riverkeeper. In 1993, Dove became the first to bear that title, one he carried until 2000 when he became the Southeastern representative for Waterkeeper Alliance.
Larry Baldwin distinctly recalls his first impression of Dove after taking the job of Lower Neuse Riverkeeper in 2002.
“I first got to know Rick and it’s like, dang, this guy’s going to be tough to deal with,” Baldwin said. “At that point he still had a lot of the Marine in him. Not that that was bad, but it was just different and, with Rick, it was either you’re going to get into this full-speed ahead or you might as well not get in it at all. Rick would take you at face value, but you also had to prove yourself. You couldn’t just tell him, ‘This is what I am.’ He wanted to see it and he had a way of seeing it, even when you didn’t know he was looking. He could really kind of sense who you were. If you came at Rick trying to overly impress him, you were fighting a losing battle.”
But the sometimes gruff-speaking mentor quickly became a friend, and Baldwin got to see a side of that Dove perhaps revealed only to those whom he was closest.
Dove was a prankster at heart. He was, not surprisingly, also a good arguer.
He was a private man, reserving conversation about his family unless and until he was asked about them. He rarely spoke of his time as a Marine, but faithfully met with a group of fellow Marine Corps veterans well into his golden years.
If he loved you, you knew it. He and his wife, Joanne, shared 60 years together.
“His top priority was the love of his life, Joanne Dove,” Rider said. “His commitment to his family was incredibly important to him.”
They raised two children, Todd, who preceded them in death, and a daughter, Hollyanne.
“Everything for Rick came back to family,” Baldwin said. “That was his reason for being. He loved his family and seeing him and Joanne together, you could tell they just had fun.”
Dove was a “very warm” person, one who was as tenacious on the racquetball court as he was a waterkeeper, Baldwin said.
“I am a blessed individual for having spent almost 23 years with him,” he said. “I’m not sure it has hit me yet. Never has there been somebody in my life that impacted me the way Rick impacted me, and still does. There’s never been one like him and I don’t think there ever will be. In my point of view, we have the obligation to continue what Rick started and what he continued to do. That’s my promise to not just him, but to myself, that we’re not going to let his legacy end just because he’s not here.”
