DATE: Thursday, September 11, 1997          TAG: 9709110461

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Comment 

SOURCE: Bob Hutchinson

                                            LENGTH:   90 lines

AN OLD FRIEND AND GREAT FISHING GUIDE WILL BE SORELY MISSED

Many of us chase our dreams with little hope of ever catching them. Cornelius Christopher Diggs of Portsmouth caught his and gave it a good ride.

Ravaged by cancer, he died Saturday in a Portsmouth hospital and was buried Thursday. He was 57.

Although he had lived in Portsmouth for the past three or four years, Suffolk was home to him and wife Dot, a Danville native and retired teacher.

But it was in the Florida Keys - more precisely on the Keys' bonefish flats - where C.C., grabbed his dream by a dorsal fin and hung on for an exciting trip.

His first career as a fireman completed, he became a successful fishing guide. People from all over the East Coast came to the Keys to fish with him, especially for big bonefish, his specialty.

To say he loved to fish is like saying Cal Ripken loves to play baseball. With both, it was far greater than the word ``love'' connotes.

He once rode a bus more than 24 hours to charter a guide for a half-day of bonefishing out of Islamorada. Then he got on the bus and came home.

Retiring after 23 years of helping battle blazes at Norfolk Naval Air Station, he studied for and obtained a Coast Guard license to operate a boat taking people for hire. Then it was off to the Keys to help customers battle bonefish.

He spent the next several years as the first and still the only black guide in the history of the Keys, where thin-water guiding is pretty much a closed society and newcomers take years to be accepted.

While he and I often fished together, I fished with him only once as my licensed guide. That was this spring when, already in agony from his malady, he insisted on taking me bonefishing in his new skiff.

I had only been in the Keys a couple of hours and still had a lot of gear to unload and my own boat to ready. But he insisted and he was my friend. How could I refuse?

It wasn't a day for bonefishing, especially with a fly rod, perhaps the most exacting of all fishing challenges. The wind was howling and the tide was all wrong.

We didn't catch a bonefish, but we came close. I had four or five shots within a couple of hours and even had two fish turn on my lure before flushing in the 2-foot-deep water.

``When we get in,'' C.C. said, ``don't blame this on your casting. You were beautiful. Blame it on your guide. I'm a little outta practice.''

Which wasn't true. People came from all over the East Coast to fish with C.C. because he caught fish and made sure they had a memorable experience. Given a couple more years, he probably would have been booked every day.

Today pictures of him and his fares hang in some of the finest and most prestigious motels, restaurants and tackle shops in Islamorada, his Florida base.

He was the subject of a major feature in the Miami Herald and frequently was singled out by the two local Keys' newspapers.

Charm and charisma. That's what C.C. had, in bunches. Plus an incredible desire to go fishing and an incredible talent for making lasting friendships. His funeral is expected to attract customers from Florida, South Carolina, Ohio and Kentucky.

He worked his magic on me soon after I met him 20 years ago, when, realizing our mutual interest in fishing, I asked if he had any other hobbies. ``That's it,'' he said. ``I'm just into fishing.'' I was hooked.

Later, I would sell him his first bonefish skiff, a weak, 20-year-old fiberglass craft converted from a discarded rental boat.

The die had been cast.

He went on his last fishing trip about a month ago, on the Oregon Inlet charter boat Pelican with skipper Arch Bracher, an old friend from his surf-fishing days, when he couldn't afford a boat or a charter.

I wasn't there but I know it was a bittersweet trip, bitter because he carried along his oxygen tank, sweet because he was on a fishing boat.

Until the end, he never complained, never lost his sense of humor.

Five weeks ago we shot our final round of pool, more to keep his mind occupied than for the competition. He was far superior with the stick, as with the fly rod.

On this night, however, he missed almost as many shots as I. ``This,'' he said, ``is like Stevie Wonder shooting Ray Charles.''

I last saw him in the hospital three days before he died. The cancer had crawled into his brain. He couldn't talk. But he could hear and he could still give you a bit of that electric, tooth-gap smile.

I knew he probably wouldn't recognize me the next time. Before leaving, I kissed him on his forehead.

I know what he was thinking: ``Bob, why didn't you tell me? I didn't know you cared so much.''

A few special dream-chasers come along. They deserve to catch that dream and give it a ride. C.C. was one of them. ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTO

Cornelius Christopher Diggs had charm and charisma, plus an

incredible desire to go fishing and an incredible talent for making

lasting friendships.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu