Robert Earl Dickerson

Memorial to Robert Earl Dickerson, October 11, 1922 to December 29, 2006. Robert Earl Dickerson, WWII veteran, mechanical engineer, loving husband, father, and grandfather, died peacefully at age 84. Born in Detroit, the first of three sons of Earl and Mary "Mae" (Wilson) Dickerson, Bob grew up in a redbrick duplex on elm-lined Birwood St. and attended MacKenzie School (K-12) a short walk past the baseball field across the street. In high school, a slender blue-eyed brunette caught his eye, but he was to busy, or too shy, to ask Dorothy Anderson out. The 1940 graduate, self proclaimed as "too smart for college," worked various construction, mechanical, and factory jobs until invited by Uncle Sam to join the army on 13 January 1943. The troop ship to North Africa was crowded, but Bob, whiled away the hours playing poker and shooting craps with fellow conscripts. Always fascicle with numbers, private Dickerson was able to play the odds and in the long run win - without arousing resentment in his colleagues. He lived off the winnings and sent every meager army paycheck home to his mother. The worst of the fighting was over in North Africa and the encampment on the Mediterranean coast was an R\u0026R center. Once ensconced in the tent village of Algeria, Bob was assigned to tank maintenance, a job that suited his tinkering nature. His assignment to train the soldiers of de Gaul's maintenance battalions kindled an enmity to all things French. Rick Atkinson's history of the North African battles, An Army at Dawn, further explains this disdain. The Americans landing on the beaches of Oran were met with hostile fire from the Vichy French; several hundred GI are buried there - a fact not widely expressed until recently. The advance into Italy did not go as smoothly as planned and soon Bob was transferred out of maintenance and into the infantry (133rd Regiment, 34th Infantry, Company K). His obvious mechanical abilities made him an ideal candidate to operate and carry a submachine gun - never mind that he was only about 5'5" tall and weighed 135 lbs soaking wet. The Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) is depicted by Hollywood as a macho weapon; Bob described it as heavy, with a rate of fire and muzzle velocity much inferior to the Nazi equivalent and with a flash that at night would "light you up like a Christmas tree." He carried that gun all the way north through Italy, a span he covered mostly on foot. Officers, he noticed, rode in jeeps. Occasionally his unit would ride in the ancient Italian trains where kids from the villages would beg chocolate and sell them bottles of cheep red wine - "the only way to tolerate the filthy, crowded box cars was to get drunk." He spent enough time in General Clark's slog through Europe's "soft underbelly" that he became a self-described adopted Italian. Florence, he reported was one beautiful city. His world views were indelibly formed by his war experiences: Disgust with the French, something unprintable about A-rabs, love for the Italians whom he considered noncombatants, respect for the British, and a grudging admiration for Germans. Bob was loathe to talk about his war experiences, but he would explain that two years of K\u0026C rations made it impossible to eat pork and beans. (An alternative explanation for his limited diet dates to his childhood. Bob's father's cruel stepmother had forced Earl to eat his vegetables and Earl resolved to never make his kids eat anything they didn't want. Bob, Ed, and Jack carried this aversion to things green well into adulthood.) Bob did have his funny story when people teased him about his short legs. When his patrol crested a hill in the Apennines, they encountered a German 88 in defilade. The appropriate response when thus outgunned is a tactical retreat. The long-legged GI winning the race back down the hill suddenly vanished, victim to an overhead round. Bob's legs were "long enough to reach the ground" he retorted; the race is not always to the swiftest. He witnessed the general superiority of the German weapons. The 88 mm cannon was particularly feared for both its accuracy (they used it for sniping) and its firepower. While walking behind a Sherman tank (made in Detroit) he watched in horror as a single round pierce the thickest armor to demolish the transmission and stop the tank in its tracks. The lesson on the strength of excellent engineering was not wasted on young Robert. R. Dickerson, Rifleman 745 was discharged on 10 December 1945 having served in the battles of the Northern Apennines and the Po Valley and entitled to wear the EAME Theater Ribbon with two Bronze Battle Stars, the Good Conduct Medal as well as the Victory Medal for World War II. He served a total of 2 years, 1 month, 4 days foreign service. He may have started as a private, but through hard work and diligence he rose all the way up to corporal (T/5), at least while in the field. Another lesson not wasted was that the difference between foot soldiers and officers was a college degree. On returning home he immediately took advantage of the GI Bill to enter the University of Detroit, eventually earning a B.S in mechanical engineering (1951) with a specialty in heating and conditioning. But before that, he worked up the nerve to ask the ex-WAVE Dorothy out on a date. His budget allowed them to go out on Duncan Lynn's small sailboat and dine on a Good Humor bar afterwards - toasted almond. They did go to the movies occasionally, Red Skelton made them laugh until their sides hurt. He convinced her to marry him on November 26, 1947. Paul Ross was born on February 12, 1950, Russell Robert on May 25, 1953 and Nancy Mae on May 18, 1956, right on time. He helped engineer a new America including construction at The University of Michigan, and then moved to Illinois in 1960 to help build Argonne National Lab operated by The University of Chicago. They bought a split level house on Hickory St. on a little knoll in Arbury Hills, with a view of the corn fields in an unincorporated area of Mokena (Indian word for mud-turtle, one traffic light, population 1200 in 1960). The white one-room school house on 191st Street was too small for all the kids, so grades one to four had the morning shift and grades five to eight the afternoon. They helped get a bond issue passed so that an eight room, brick school could be built - this one had running water and indoor plumbing, and Bob served as president of the school board. On Sunday afternoons he enjoyed watching Little League games on the bit of corn field that the farmer left fallow for the kids. Boy Scout Troop 10 continued to use the one room school house for meetings and Bob would sometimes accompany them on camping trips. The whole family did a few summer camps on the Lake Arbutus in Black River Falls, Wisconsin where the family could catch all the croppies you could eat. Bob helped build a plant for Union Carbide in Missouri and worked for Amoco in Joliet. He was fond of his parents and his brothers Edward (who passed away in 2006) and Jack. For holidays he would drive the family back to Detroit - they were 320 slow miles before the interstate was built. They made a few trips in a new Corvair or Simca, but moved on to a Galaxy 500 and various station wagons. His memory lives on in his niece (Susan Dickerson Schrock) and nephews (Kenneth, Bruce, Brian, and Gary Dickerson), children and grandchildren, Lauren Nicole Goetsch (September 20, 1987), Allison Louise Goetsch (August 17, 1990), Sarah Wren Pehrsson Dickerson (April 17, 1989) and Nathan Russell Pehrsson Dickerson (February 1, 1993). In 1995 Bob and Dorothy took a well-earned retirement in Cottonwood, Arizona where they enjoyed showing the grandkids the red rocks, ghost towns, and Indian ruins. The extended family got together in 1997, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. His life was not easy and the horrors of war kept a part of him hidden away from us forever, but as a soldier, engineer, husband and father - Robert Earl Dickerson helped make the world a better place. He was part of a generation of reluctant heroes, "the legions of democracy in serried ranks of herringbone twill, brave men who would unshackle a continent." A Memorial Service honoring the life of Robert Earl Dickerson will be held at the Mountain View United Methodist Church on Saturday, January 20, 2007 at 11:00am. Robert will be laid to rest in Michigan. An online guestbook is available at www.westcottfuneralhome.com