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From:  New York Time, June 24, 1948, p. 25

Col. Dickinson, 84, College Founder

Head of Surgical Instrument Firm in Rutherford Dies, Set Up School in 1942

Special to The New York Times

RUTHERFORD, N. J., June 23 -- Col. Fairleigh S. Dickinson, president and founder of Becton, Dickinson & Co., one of the country's largest surgical instrument manufacturing concerns, died here today at his home, 185 Ridge Road, after a year's illness.  His age was 84.

Colonel Dickinson also was the founder of the Fairleigh Dickinson College here, a career college for vocations such business administration, merchandising, accounting and industrial management.  The school was established in 1942 with Colonel Dickinson as the largest contributor to its endowment fund.

Born in Beaufort, N. C., colonel Dickinson was the son of David Owen and Margaret Ann Tillman Dickinson.  As a young man he was a sailor on a square rigger for two years, before moving to Elizabeth, N. J., where he worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Co. while attending night high school.

After being associated with the Saugerties (N. Y.) Manufacturing Company, Colonel Dickinson and Maxwell W. Becton founded their surgical firm in New York in 1897, and moved it to Rutherford several years later.

During the first World War, he was inducted into the United States Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel, working with the Army Medical corps on supplying surgical instruments.  In 1926 he was appointed a member of the War Department's business council with the rank of colonel.

Colonel Dickinson was names 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.  The previous year, Under-Secretary of War.  Robert Patterson named him to attend a conference of industrial leaders as the representative of the surgical instrument industry.

Since 1927 he had been 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.  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 since 1941.

In 1938 he returned to his home town to build the Core Creek Community Church and Social Center Community Clubhouse.

Surviving are his widow, Mrs. Grace Smith Dickinson, whom he married in 1916; a son, Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr., of Rutherford, and a sister, Miss Lulu Dickinson of Plainfield, N. J.

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