Citation: Harman. J.L. "Joseph S. Dickey," Teachers College Heights, March 1934, pp. 26-27.

The Southern Normal School of Bowling Green, Kentucky, in its brief, brilliant career probably produced more choice men of character and distinction than any American institution of small enrollment and only thirty-two years of existence.

Fundamental reasons were back of this rare record. Teachers were consecrated to the one idea of mental development, and their incessant earnestness inspired their students to supreme effort, but their greatest ally was the type of students whom they taught who were not sent nor did they attend school because of convenience or custom. Each had a growing eagerness for knowledge and a determined desire to escape the restrictions of both poverty and ignorance and a more impelling desire to embrace a richer life. They were potentially great among their fellows. When education was added, they were able to sustain themselves on the upper highways of intellectual activity. In this group were S.T. Bledsoe, President, Santa Fe Railroad Company; David H. Kinchloe, twenty years in Congress, and now a Federal Judge in New York City; A.L. Peterman, Kentucky senator, teacher, author, lecturer; Edwin Norris, late Governor of Montana; Cordell Hull, Secretary of State; T.C. Cherry, educator, author, thirty years Superintendent of City Schools, Bowling Green, Kentucky; H.H. Cherry, educator, author, forty-one years chief executive officer of educational institutions in Bowling Green, Kentucky; Tom F. McBeath, educator and poet.

J.S. Dickey was of the number. He was born near Glasgow, Kentucky, in 1860. In 1878, he entered the Southern Normal School, graduating in 1881. After teaching a country school, he became principal of the Hardinsburg Academy, Hardinsburg, Kentucky. There in 1885 he was married to Miss Myra Heston, who lives in Bowling Green. From Hardinsburg he went to the National Normal University and took an A.M. degree. Four years he was principal of the Buena Vista Normal College, Buena Vista, Mississippi; five years, head of the Normal College of Lexington, Mississippi; and eight years proprietor of the Skyland Institute, Asheville, North Carolina.

In 1899, he was put at the head of the Classical Department of the Southern Normal School by Dr. H.H. Cherry, then the president of that institution. This position he filled until 1907, when the Southern Normal School was supplanted by what is now the Western Kentucky State Teachers College. Mr. Dickey then became president of the Bowling Green Business University and remained so until his death.

By instinct, training and experience he was a teacher, but not of the conventional type. His classes were never dreary. He projected himself far beyond the outposts of his profession by his various extraordinary powers, one of them being his superiority as an entertaining public speaker. His addresses were educational, religious, political, civic and purely entertaining. Of whatever character, they were convincing in logic and glittered with freshness and sparkled with humor. The most stupid never drooped in Joe Dickey’s audience and the most profound never thought him commonplace. He once said that his sense of humor was a burden to him, but it was never so to those who heard him only once or daily for many years. In conversation with one or a group, he was the central figure.

He was a story-teller supreme. The dance of his eyes, the purity and richness of his language, the tone of his voice, the glamorous atmosphere he created as his stories progressed, the surprising endings, produced “the laughter that opens the lips and the heart.” His sarcasm was never blighting; his ridicule, never humiliating; his climaxes, never unclean or suggestive. Under and through his humor ran a strong vein of profound seriousness but it never approached the doleful.

His erect carriage, quick step, stylish and spotless clothes, cheerful greeting, ringing and contagious laugh gave impressiveness to a body slightly below the average in size; his energy, physical and mental, was as unceasing as his breathing; his large head well poised upon broad, square shoulders distinguished him in appearance. He had the power to lead without effort and to win without the bestowal of gifts, and attracted favorable attention at court, or in college, in the field or on the forum, among the elect or neglected.

Toward all good causes, he was genuinely generous. The Baptist Church, to which he gave endless and affectionate service from his youth until his death, was the object of his greatest generosity. His disregard of economy in public giving was exceeded only by his careful economy in spending upon himself.

To him religion was both ideal and practical, and though faultlessly loyal to his own denomination he dearly loved any creed or organization which attempted to promote the beautiful philosophy of Christianity.

He reveled in beauty and especially the great out-of-doors. He was a failure as a shot; an expert with the rod; and used both forms of sport more to come in contact with nature than to kill or catch.

Few men have taken rank in both classical and commercial education. This Mr. Dickey did. After a long connection with liberal arts institutions, he became easily one of America’s foremost exponents of commercial education, giving to the last institution over which he presided both a cultured and business spirit. It is now accredited as a four-year college in the field of business, an accomplishment new in commercial education. For eight years he was a member of the Board of Governors of the National Association of Accredited Commercial Schools, the first and most influential organization the private business schools of America ever had. The last of the National Federation of Commercial Teachers, setting up and presiding over in Cleveland, Ohio, Christmas, 1920, one of the greatest meetings the Federation has had in its forty years of life.

On the evening of January 16, 1921, sixteen days after the Cleveland meeting. Mr. Dickey was sitting in his new home with Mrs. Dickey, writing an editorial, when death came so suddenly that the word he was writing was never finished. Two days thereafter all that remained of one of the most striking characters Kentucky ever produced was followed to beautiful Fairview Cemetery by one of the largest funeral processions ever seen in Bowling Green. His pastor said of him in the funeral oration: “On Sunday evening at six o’clock all of us were greatly shocked when he heard of the sudden passing of one of the finest men of earth and yet we believe that J.S. Dickey must have been more surprised than we, for he was in his own home one second and in heaven the next.”

A local paper said: “His passing came at the high point of his sixty years of usefulness. His last day was as helpful and happy and busy as any he ever spent. He lived to the end of the journey a serious, purposeful life embellished with a spirit and humor as rich as it was rare.” And a professional magazine said: “His love for mankind was great enough to last when disillusionment came; his patience with the frailties and faults of the human being was as tender and hopeful as that of a parent for his stumbling child.”

In June after his death in January, his former students erected an impressive granite monument at his grave. Dr. Fred Brown, one of Mr. Dickey’s students in Asheville, and, then, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tennessee, delivered an eloquent memorial address.

On the monument is engraved the following:

“An educator forty-three years. At his death, President of the Bowling Green Business University.

“A courageous, humorous, but serious man of mature scholarship, rare personality and charming graces; a popular public speaker, a successful school proprietor, a virile citizen, a Christian leader and teacher who reproduced himself many times in the lives of the thousands who sat at his feet.

“Erected by his grateful students who revere his memory and treasure his example.”

Additional information regarding Joseph Dickey:

Bowling Green Business University publication index

Dickey, J.S. "Letter to Former Students," Southern Educator, August 1906, p. 3.

"Educator Dies," Park City Daily News, January 17, 1921.

"Impressive Ceremonies Mark the Unveiling of Dickey Monument," Park City Daily News, January 7, 1922.

"J.S. Dickey," KEA Bulletin, nd.

"J.S. Dickey Drops Dead," Park City Daily News, January 16, 1921.

"Many Friends Attend Funeral of J.S. Dickey," Park City Daily News, January 19, 1921, p. 1.

Mell, A.W. "Prof. J.S. Dickey, A.B. and A.M," Southern Educator, July 1899.

"Memorial Service Held at Normal School for Joseph Stone Dickey," Park City Daily News, January 19, 1921, p. 1

"Students Pay Tribute to J.S. Dickey," Park City Daily News, January 21, 1921, p.1

"The Passing of Dr. Dickey," Accredited News, Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1921, p. 1.

UA99 Bowling Green Business University

Obituary, Box 2, Folder 2

Program for Unveiling Joseph Stone Dicky Monument, Box 2, Folder 2

These and other sources are available in the Harrison-Baird Reading Room at the Kentucky Museum & Library.