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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 36 Number 12
August 2009
Jake Dykstra: A life of friendship, service
Jake Dykstra died on July 11 at the age of 88. He was a lot of things over the course of his long, rich life – a commercial fisherman, fishing industry leader, sailor, husband, father, and dear friend to many.
Dykstra left behind a two-fold legacy on behalf of the fishing industry. Following a stint in the US Navy as a minesweeper commander, he went home to Rhode Island to fish with his brother in the late 1940s. By the early 1950s, he had been drafted into service of another kind, as president of the Point Judith Fishermen’s Co-op.
It was an enormous responsibility, one to which he devoted himself completely for the next 30 years. Formed in the late 1940s, the co-op brought fishermen from the port of Galilee together to market their fish for better prices. Over the years, they invested in facilities, including a processing plant, packing operation, and freezer. For a time, member fishermen were part of one of the most successful fishermen’s co-ops in the country.
But beyond the demanding day-to-day operation of the co-op, Dykstra saw an immediate and growing need for someone to speak for fishermen in the political world.
Starting in the mid-1960s, this quiet-spoken man began a life of traveling around the country, talking with other fishermen, and then going back and forth to Washington, DC to meet with congressional representatives and their staffers.
The goal was to convince Congress to pass the 200-mile-limit law and push the industrial foreign fishing fleets, which were decimating fish stocks, away from the US coast. It was a fight that would last a decade. When it finally was won in 1976, expulsion of the foreigners came at a price – federal fisheries management.
Dykstra knew from the start that fishermen would chafe at this idea. As his long-time friend and colleague Lucy Sloan recalled, Dykstra said, “’We will live to regret this.’”
In an attempt to prevent the government from foisting uninformed, top-down management on the industry, Dykstra helped create the regional fishery management councils. And, he insisted that commercial fishermen be included as council members. He had a bedrock faith that fishermen knew the nature and business of fishing best and deserved a place at the table.
Before, during, and after the 200-mile limit campaign, Jake Dykstra represented fishermen. He was a member of the US delegation to the international Law of the Sea Conference for the United Nations, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization’s International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, known as ICNAF, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. He was one of the original members of the New England Fishery Management Council and served for a time as its chairman.
During Dykstra’s July 22 memorial service at the Wakefield Baptist Church, Sloan observed that his ability to go from being a Narragansett, RI fisherman to demanding and commanding attention to the needs of fishermen during negotiations in Washington, DC, Rome, and Moscow emanated from who he was: “leader, teacher, mentor.”
She recalled Dykstra as “a voice of reason, especially when reason was a scarce commodity,” and described a typical scene that anyone who ever saw him in action will remember.
“In meetings, we’d all go forth and back,” Sloan said. “After we finally wound down, someone would say, ‘Jake, you’ve been pretty quiet. What do you think?’ And Jake would say, ‘Well, it seems to me …,’ and what he said often would be eventually what happened.”
In a pastoral meditation on Dykstra’s life, Rev. Clay Berry described him this way.
“When Jake left his nets, it was to care for those who fished alongside him, advocating on their behalf, taking their issues to heart, fighting for their fair share,” he said. “He was the voice of those who didn’t have a voice in the halls of power.”
While those days made up an important part of his life, there was much more to Jake Dykstra than his role as fishermen’s advocate. He had a beloved daughter, Trina, with his late wife Mary. Later, he married Kathy Cole Dykstra, pictured above, a vibrant young woman, filled with life and laughter. They fished together on the Janileen, built a home together, and bought a boat on which they lived together in Culebra, Puerto Rico and sailed throughout the Caribbean. Kathy Dykstra died much too soon in 1997, creating a painful void in Dykstra’s life, but one that was gradually eased by his love of sailing, the ocean, and a number of very close friends.
Around 1999, he began designing and eventually built the Junket, a sailing vessel with a hull along the lines of a Novi boat and sails reminiscent of a traditional Chinese junk. As Doug Marshall and Kris Boehmer recalled during the memorial service, Dykstra couldn’t run the boat all by himself and so relied on his friends for crew.
Along with Jim O’Malley, Dick Allen, and others, Boehmer and Marshall were among those who many times made their way south to jump on the Junket for trips that lasted a few days or weeks and sometimes longer. They told of sailing to no place in particular, stopping for dinner and overnights with the many, many people Dykstra met and befriended over the years, sharing a Scotch while watching the sunset, and the pleasure of just being with a man whom they loved and admired.
In her concluding remarks, Sloan summed up Dykstra’s life by saying, “Jake worked hard, lived well – very well – and gave so much to many.”
She and others at the service all said in their own way what many felt. We all were incredibly fortunate that he came into our lives, professionally and personally. It was a privilege to have known Jake Dykstra.
Memorial donations in his name may be made to: The Point Judith Fishermen’s Scholarship Fund, PO Box 386, Narragansett, RI 02882. /cfn/
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