Background
Born in Beaufort, North Carolina, he was the son of David Owen and Margaret Ann Tillman Dickinson.
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Fairleigh Colonel
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As a young man he was a sailor on a square rigger for two years, before moving to Elizabeth, New Jersey (U.S.), where he worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Company while attending night high school. After being associated with the Saugerties Manufacturing Company, Dickinson and Maxwell Becton founded their surgical firm in New York in 1897, and moved it to Rutherford several years later. During the first World War, Dickinson was inducted into the United States Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel, working with the Army Medical corps on supplying surgical instruments.
Colonel Dickinson was named chairman of the medical and surgical committees for the medical departments of both the Army and Navy in 1940 and was reappointed to the post in 1944.
From 1927 until his death he was president of the Rutherford National Bank. He also was director of the American Surgical Trade Association for nineteen years and president of the Manufacturers Surgical Trade Association from 1919 to 1944.
In 1942, he used his wealth to found Fairleigh Dickinson College, which is today Fairleigh Dickinson University. Dickinson was interred in Hillside Cemetery, in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.
Membership
In 1926 he was appointed a member of the War Department"s business council with the rank of colonel. He was a charter member and past president of the Rutherford Rotary Club, a member of the Masons and the Knights Templar and a member of the executive committees of the national and regional councils of the Boy Scouts of America.
