[Vision2020] A small Idaho town mourns the loss of a big-hearted man

[Dick Schmidt]

A very nice tribute to a great man from The Oregonian.

A small Idaho town mourns the loss of a big-hearted man 
Moscow - City councilor, professor and theater devotee John Dickinson vaulted a bridge to avoid being hit 
Monday, February 05, 2007 
LARRY BINGHAM 
It was 6 p.m. and already pitch dark as John Dickinson and his girlfriend, Julie Bell, drove along Interstate 84. They were approaching The Dalles when the car a few lengths ahead of them struck a dog carrier in the fast lane, slid out of control and smacked a concrete berm before jerking to a stop in the slow lane. 

Dickinson, 62, parked behind the stalled car and jumped out to see whether the driver was OK. Joanne Sutton, 25, of Portland stumbled into the fast lane and collapsed on the pavement. Dickinson helped her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her until she regained control of her senses. 

Then he led her back to his car and told Bell he was going to move the pet carrier. 

This was Sunday, Jan. 7. The sky was clear, and a strong wind blew down the Columbia Gorge from the east, whipping the Columbia River that runs beside the interstate. It was too dark for any of them to see they had stopped on a bridge 35 feet above the spot where the John Day River enters the Columbia. 

Bell, 47, had opened the passenger side door for Sutton to climb in when she heard tires screeching. She looked up. She saw a car careening toward them. 

David Grant, 42, of Portland, had come upon the two cars and slammed on the brakes of his 1969 Pontiac Firebird. Bell knew the Firebird was out of control because the headlights coming toward her strobed in circles. 

"We're going to get hit," she said. 

It was all she had time to say. 

Nearly three weeks later, a play opened in an old vaudeville theater on Main Street in the college town of Moscow, Idaho. Patrons waiting for tickets lined the sidewalk where clumps of frozen snow reflected the red-and-yellow lights of the marquee. 

The play "Touch," about a man whose wife goes missing and is later discovered murdered, was about to begin when a woman in a flowing black dress appeared in a spotlight on the stage. Andriette Pieron, one of the founding members of Sirius Idaho Theatre, said she was doing the night's announcements because fellow board member John Dickinson could not. Her voice cracked. 

Dickinson taught at the University of Idaho for nearly 30 years and served as head of the computer science department, but in retirement, he developed a passion for theater. And passion, say the people who knew him, drove all his choices. 

He was a man who refused to be compartmentalized. He favored Birkenstocks, shoulder-length white hair and a liberal town, yet he lived in a state known for its political conservatism. 

Here was a guy who told the director of one play he auditioned for that he couldn't easily tap into his anger because he could count on five fingers the few times in his life he'd been genuinely angry. 

After a former graduate student, Sami al-Hussayen, , was accused of terrorism and immigration fraud and jailed under the Patriot Act -- in a controversial case that drew national attention -- Dickinson was so shocked at the reach of government that he ran for public office. He was elected to the Moscow City Council. 

Soon afterward, a jury found his grad student not guilty of terrorism but deadlocked on some of the immigration charges. Al-Hussayen agreed to be deported if the government dropped the remaining charges. 

Meanwhile, Dickinson's proudest moment as a councilman, he told Mayor Nancy Chaney, was getting stop signs placed at an intersection where children routinely cross. "I don't mean this to sound demeaning," Chaney said. "But John had a childlike joy that is so uncommon in grown-up people." 

With his white hair, electric-blue eyes and exuberant gait, Dickinson was a fixture on Main Street in Moscow. If he wasn't at the theater -- some nights he'd stay until 3 a.m. working on sets and lighting -- he was at the One World Cafe coffee shop or the town's cooperative-owned grocery store or the BookPeople of Moscow bookseller or the Red Door restaurant. 

After the play, patrons walked to the Red Door to remember a man not easily pigeonholed. 

The restaurant, with its dramatic red walls and black-and-white-tiled floor, was where Dickinson joined fellow council members for a beer every Thursday. Twice divorced, with three grown children and three grandchildren, Dickinson dined at the Red Door on nights he wasn't eating Newman's Own Organic Ginger-Os and drinking whole milk at home. 

The two college students who shared his house knew he was home if they heard his booming laugh upstairs. It told them he was watching "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" or talking on the telephone, usually to his girlfriend in Portland, whom he talked to every day. 

Teva Palmer, 20, said Dickinson lived life as if were a big kid. "We would tell people we lived with him and they would say, 'Oh, you live with an old man.' And we were like, 'Are you crazy? He acts like he's our age.' " 

Dickinson refused to let them pay rent or utilities, and he donated his City Council paychecks to the theater. He baby-sat a grandson every Tuesday and never sat opposite Bell at restaurants but always by her side. 

"I say he swept me off my feet and never set me down," said Bell, who met him a year ago at the Red Door. After they began dating, she often asked him, "Are you for real?" 

Dickinson was not ashamed to kiss her hand in public. He liked to read aloud to her and once text-messaged during a rehearsal for "The Death of a Salesman," saying, "You're in my heart every moment. . . . Act II is beginning." 

The last time Bell saw him he was walking away from her, down a dark interstate road. 

The car spinning toward them slammed into the side of Dickinson's car, throwing Bell into the berm where she hit her head and fractured her tailbone. 

When the Oregon State Police arrived at the scene, more than 30 cars had stopped behind the collision. Bell and Sutton were whisked to The Dalles where they were treated for minor injuries at Mid-Columbia Medical Center, but not before Bell told the state trooper that Dickinson had gone to move the dog carrier. 

Grant, driving the Firebird, said he never saw Dickinson in the road. Troopers say Dickinson must have either been bumped by Grant's car or saw the car coming and jumped out of the way. He would not have realized -- until it was too late -- that he had jumped from a bridge. 

The water that night was 40 degrees. A cold snap followed the next week, sending temperatures lower. Sherman County sheriff's deputies looked by boat but found nothing. A search by Multnomah County sheriff's deputies with a sonar device found no sign of Dickinson tangled in the pilings of the old bridge under the current one. Skamania County, Wash., offered divers, but they were not deployed because they couldn't see in the murky water estimated to be 100 feet deep. 

Last week, dogs trained to smell for decomposing bodies were scheduled to scout the area, but temperatures sank again. Sheriff Brad Lohrey said deputies will continue to search on days when the weather permits. 

The day before Dickinson disappeared, he and Bell stopped at Robert Greene's bookstore and searched for a cookbook for Bell, a student at the Western Culinary Institute. Dickinson said he'd enjoyed spending the holidays with friends and relatives and looked forward to the trip to Portland to take Bell back to school. 

Dickinson also said he was excited about the play "Touch." He said he'd wept when he finished reading the script. 

Although Dickinson found the opening monologue moving, that was not what Bell thought of while sitting in the dark theater on opening night. She was struck when the lead character, mourning his wife, wondered whether the smile on her face came from her heart -- "her great, big, ever-expanding, loaded-with-the-spirit heart." 

That was when Bell thought of Dickinson. There was never any doubt he would venture into the darkness to move the pet carrier. Not with his heart. 

Larry Bingham: 503-221-8262; larrybingham at news.oregonian.com 
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