Memory Lane: Dog proved to be Henry Flagler's best friend in Palm Beach

In a 1910 letter to the resident organist who regularly played music at his Palm Beach mansion, Henry Flagler made note of a photograph that depicted “our household treasures.”

One of the two “treasures” was Flagler’s wife, Mary Lily, who’d received a treasure of her own when Flagler built the couple’s marble-pillared Palm Beach manse as a wedding present to her in 1901.

The other “treasure” in the photo, Flagler noted, was a dog.

Flagler — who helped steer Standard Oil’s rise before devoting himself to building a game-changing railroad and luxury-hotel network in Florida — is said to have adored the fluffy white pooch.

He described the German spitz (now called an American Eskimo dog) as “a dandy,” “a darling” and “the dearest.”

It often sat on Flagler’s lap when the magnate rode around in a popular Gilded Age conveyance in Palm Beach: bicycle-mounted al fresco wicker chairs pedaled by service workers from behind.

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“He’s a beauty,” Flagler proclaimed of the pooch.

The dog’s name? Delos.

That also is the name of a Greek island and the mythological birthplace of the Greek god Apollo.

Apollo is celebrated throughout Flagler’s Palm Beach mansion, which now is the centerpiece of the Flagler Museum. For instance, the domed ceiling of the Grand Hall depicts the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi.

It’s unclear exactly when Delos the dog came into Flagler’s life. Sources indicate it was given to Flagler around 1910 — three years before Flagler’s death — by the family of noted hotelier Frederic Sterry.

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Sterry managed Flagler’s first Palm Beach hotel — the now-gone lakefront Royal Poinciana — for 15 years after it was built in 1894.

He also managed for years Flagler’s other Palm Beach hotel, an oceanfront hotspot built in 1896 and renamed The Breakers in 1901.

Flagler and Sterry maintained a close relationship, according to Flagler Museum officials. Flagler kept a photograph of Sterry’s two daughters on his desk and helped fund their education. The eldest daughter, Virginia, “decided that Mr. Flagler needed a pet (and) Delos appeared and became Flagler’s constant companion,” author Thomas Graham writes in his 2014 book “Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine.”

As a companion during Flagler’s last few years of life, Delos seems to have been a source of joy and solace.

At the time, the newly minted octogenarian was overseeing one of the most ambitious engineering feats ever undertaken by a private citizen: his Over-Sea Railroad, which added 156 miles of track — mostly over water — to Key West.

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Hurricanes and other forces challenged progress, but upon the extension’s completion in 1912, Flagler was fêted by thousands of citizens in Key West.

Flagler’s sight and hearing increasingly were failing during the last years of his life. His general health was “excellent,” he wrote in 1910 to a friend, but in that same letter, he referred to his “blindness” and “partial deafness.”

“I don’t know what we would do if not for the dog Mr. Sterry sent us,” he wrote to another friend. “He is a beauty, and no words of mine can portray his good sense.”

In 1913, Flagler suffered a serious fall at Whitehall. Weeks later in May, he died at the age of 83.

When thousands of people mourned and paid their respects at one of Flagler’s St. Augustine hotels, the Ponce de Leon, “Flagler’s dog Delos was seen in a corridor of the hotel,” Graham notes in his book, “and Mary Lily would keep him as her lifetime companion.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: White pooch Delos seen by Henry Flagler as one of his treasures