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William Lee Dickens
Inscription and Notes:
A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY of WILLIAM LEE DICKENS
by his friend W.W. Driskoll which appeared in the Sparta Ishmaelite following
his death in November of 1936
In the words of an ancient creator, I can say “There Lies the Noblest Roman of them all.”
He was noble because of his high ideals which he cultivated, maintained and lived in all the relations of life.
Through those ideals, demonstrated in his daily work and conversation, he made a worthwhile contribution to public opinion in this section of the State--a contribution whose value cannot be measured in words.
He was noble because of his delightful attitudes toward all classes of people--the strong, the well-to-do, the weak, the humble, the poor and needy. He could “walk with Kings nor lose the common touch”. It was as natural for Mr. Dickens to act the part of a gentlemen everywhere and toward everybody as it is for the sun to shine.
He was noble because he met all the duties and responsibilities of good citizenship , and he met them cheerfully, unselfishly, intelligently and patriotically.
Yes, he was noble because he believed the Bible, read and studied it assiduously, through his keen spiritual insight, understood it, obeyed its great precepts, and thus set an example worthy of emulation by all who knew him.
Mr. Dickens and I had been good friends for more than twenty-five years. In his friendships he was constant, loyal, unselfish, sincere, sympathetic, magnanimous, During those years we met and talked, hundreds and hundreds of times in the store, on the sidewalks, in church and Sunday School, in the Jury room, in our homes and elsewhere. And in all those almost countless conversations, not in one single, solitary instance did he ever take occasion to use a word that was even slightly soiled or to relate a salacious story or anecdote.
He was the cleanest minded man I have ever known. And so nicely poised was he, so patient and pleasing and pious was his own personality, that he readily commanded the wholehearted respect of those who knew him.
Richly endowed with common sense, a model citizen in all the walks of life, a Christian gentleman of the highest type, he has left behind him a record that will live as long as men love honesty, truthfulness, virtue, uprightness, kindness, gentleness, and all the magnificent endowments of Noble Character.