Cup o' Joe

Food, travel, and news on the Chesapeake Bay

This weekend is a big one in the history of Tangier Island. On August 29, the island’s new $1.4 million health clinic will be dedicated. It’s a long time coming for the people of this isolated Bay island, a story Kessler Burnett so eloquently told in our December 2006 issue.

But the happiness of Tangier’s populace is tempered by the news that their physician—Dr. David Nichols, a selfless man who has flown to Tangier Island every Thursday from his home in White Stone, Va., for the last 30 years—is dying of cancer. According to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he only has four months or so left.

I can’t imagine how the Nichols’ family—and the people of Tangier Island—must be feeling at this time. This is a guy who has literally saved countless lives on the remote island. In a place where food has to brought in by boat several times a week, medical supplies are at a premium. Numerous physicians have come and gone since the clinic was established in the 1950s. “Sometimes it’s intense, but I love the people,” Nichols told Chesapeake Life four years ago. “They’re all so familiar to me now and appreciative. They give me hugs and kisses and food. They’re fiercely independent people who don’t beg. They’re always appreciative of people doing things for them. I just hope we can provide them with a better place for healthcare. No matter what, I plan to keep doing this as long as I’m needed.” 

And the feeling was mutual: “He’s been coming here since I was a little girl,” resident Jamie Bradshaw told the Times-Dispatch. “I don’t know what we’d do without him. I can’t even describe in words what he’s meant to all of us.”

Several years ago, I was on Tangier Island researching another story when an old building was razed to make room for the new clinic. I stood with 20 or so other islanders watching a bulldozer take down the building’s shell. “It’ll be good to finally have a new clinic,” a woman told me. “Dr. Nichols will finally have a proper place [to practice].”

Not that the facility mattered so much to Nichols, who was awarded the Country Doctor of the Year in 2006, and just last year was featured in a major national article in Parade Magazine. For him it was always about the island—and its hardy breed of people.

“I have a saying,” he told Chesapeake Life. “When you’re on Tangier Island, you’re a little closer to heaven.”

And, surely, so is Dr. Nichols.

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