Albert I. Dickerson '30 1908-1972
HE never thought of himself, let alone spoke of himself, as standing close to the heart of the Dartmouth experience, but that is just where he stood."
These words, by President Emeritus Dickey at a memorial service in Rollins Chapel on May 20, were spoken in eulogy of Albert Inskip Dickerson '30, Dean of Freshmen, whose wholly unexpected death two days earlier had stunned the Dartmouth community and many hundreds of friends beyond Hanover.
Al Dickerson was nearing the completion of his 42nd year as an administrative officer of the College—an exceptional stretch of service in top-level posts that began shortly after graduation in 1930 when President Ernest Martin Hopkins picked him to be one of his two assistants in the President's Office. The close association with that great leader of Dartmouth, skilled in administration and
gracious in personality, served to nurture and develop the similar qualities of his young assistant, whose long years with the College—as assistant and then executive assistant to the President, executive secretary of the Alumni Fund, executive officer of the College, director of admissions and financial aid, and since 1956 Dean of Freshmen—were characterized by a deep devotion to the College, a steady competence, an open and unassuming nature, a genuine and friendly concern for others and especially for each individual student he dealt with, and a wit that was joined with such a gift for expression that his friends wished he could have found the time for more writing.
These qualities, especially the humorous wisdom and the concern that each freshman be given understanding help in having a successful Dartmouth experience, were revealed in the widely known "Parents Letters" that Dean Dickerson sent throughout the year to the mothers and fathers of freshmen. Some excerpts from these "chats by mail" are printed with this article.
In the fall of 1926, as a member of the entering Class of 1930, the future Dean of Freshmen came to Dartmouth from Chattanooga, Tenn., where he was born on January 17, 1908. An editor in high school, he earned a place on the staff of The Dartmouth and in his senior year was associate editor. His puckish column, "The Gilded Shovel," and his free verse about Andy the Tapeworm and Lorinda the Louse delighted the campus and established him as one of the gifted writers in the student body. He also was undergraduate editor of the DartmouthAlumni Magazine.
A friendship with Mr. Hopkins and ultimately an invitation to join the President's staff grew out of Al Dickerson's varied accomplishments as an undergraduate. An honors student in English, he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi and Sphinx, vice president of the Interfraternity Council and The Arts, a boxer, and a member of Green Key and Round Table. Upon graduation he was elected secretary-chairman of the Class of 1930 and filled that office for ten years.
Along with the job of Assistant to the President went that of being Director of the Dartmouth News Service, a responsibility Al Dickerson filled until 1933, when he was named Executive Assistant to the President, succeeding the late Robert C. Strong '24, who moved up to Dean of Freshmen and Director of Admissions. The year before he had taken on the additional job of being executive secretary of the Alumni Fund, a post he filled for twelve years with marked success.
Beginning in 1934, Al Dickerson also wrote The Bulletin, the mimeographed in-the-family newsletter that was then sent to a few thousand alumni officers and workers. Here the Dickerson prose style was given free rein, and nothing from the College was more eagerly awaited than his sprightly accounts of how things were going in Hanover. The tree seen from his Parkhurst Hall window came to be known as the Bulletin Elm, because hardly an issue of the newsletter appeared without a seasonal description of that noble tree, budding in spring, full-leafed in summer, bright with foliage in fall, and bare and snow-spotted in winter. The Dickerson era of The Bulletin lasted for a dozen years, and during that period he had to devote a good bit of his time to the goodnatured fending off of alumni who wanted to get on the mailing list but did not have the "official" status to rate it.
One year before John Sloan Dickey became President of Dartmouth in 1945, Al Dickerson had been advanced to Executive Officer of the College. He continued in that post until 1948; and once more he was handling multiple duties when in 1946 President Dickey named him Director of Admissions. Six years later he added the job of Director of Financial Aid. In 1954 he took leave from these regular responsibilities to serve as executive director of the Trustees Planning Committee, established to study every aspect of the College in anticipation of the 1969 Bicentennial. While doing this he continued as Chairman of the Committee on Scholarships and Loans and Chairman of the Committee on Admission and the Freshman Year. The TCP assignment occupied him for two years until he was chosen in 1956 to be the new Dean of Freshmen. The deanship made him an ex officio member of the executive committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and he served also as chairman of the Board on Admission and Financial Aid and as a member of the Committees on the Freshman Class, the Freshman Seminars, and Standing and Conduct.
One would have to continue at considerable length to mention all the things Al Dickerson did for Dartmouth College, the Class of 1930, undergraduate organizations and publications, freshmen and their parents, alumni, and colleagues at other institutions—or to mention his interests in squash and all Dartmouth sports, in Champlain College of which he was a trustee, in Norwich, Vermont, where he lived, or Nantucket, where he had a summer home. Certainly he had one of the widest circles of admiring friends ever vouchsafed to an officer of Dartmouth College.
To the tributes voiced by President Kerneny, President Emeritus Dickey, and many others, the Trustees of the College at their Commencement meeting last month put their feelings on record in the following resolution: "As Albert Inskip Dickerson unassumingly gave a lifetime of love, wit, and wisdom to this College; as he wrote, counselled, and lived a career of quiet grace; and as his generosity of spirit and calm resolve made this College ever a better place, now let it be indelibly incised in the records of Dartmouth that the Board of Trustees affirms its gratitude and thanks for that selfless service and extends to his wife, Lucia, its deepest sympathy."
The wife who shared forty years of Al Dickerson's life at Dartmouth is the former Lucia Weimer of Lebanon, Pa., a graduate of Smith, who was married to him on September 8, 1932. Also surviving are two sons, Albert Inskip Dickerson Jr. '56, assistant professor of English at the University of Vermont, and Gregory W. Dickerson, Harvard '59, assistant professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College; three grandchildren; and two sisters, Mrs. Brenton Stearns and Miss Dorothy Dickerson, both of New Providence, N.J.
For the memorial service on May 20, Rollins Chapel was filled with Dartmouth colleagues, undergraduates, present and past Trustees of the College, alumni friends including a large delegation from the Class of 1930, Hanover and Norwich townspeople, and colleagues from other colleges and schools. Following cremation, burial was in the Old Dartmouth Cemetery.
An Albert I. Dickerson '30 Memorial Fund has been established at the College, its purpose to be determined later.
