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A North Carolina sailor-turned-North Jersey industrialist, Fairleigh S. Dickinson has a name now known throughout Bergen County and beyond.
Even today, his résumé holds up: colonel successful the U.S. Armed Forces, the cardinal benefactor for New Jersey’s largest backstage university, and the co-founder of BD, a aesculapian proviso institution that ranks No. 187 connected the Fortune 500.
Ann Dickinson said she was a twelvemonth aged erstwhile Dickinson, her grandfather, died. From household lore, she describes a disciplined and demanding man who turned hobbies into outlets for his driven personality.
He didn’t conscionable cod good expansive touring cars, helium raced them.
He didn’t conscionable ain French bulldogs, helium showed them.
“I spot him arsenic a competitory guy, who had thing to prove,” she says.
The lad of a erstwhile Confederate soldier, Dickinson was calved successful 1866 successful Core Creek, North Carolina. He near astatine astir 14, roughly five years aft his father's death, to set disconnected connected his own, says Ann Dickinson.
Finding employment arsenic a mate connected a merchant ship, Dickinson sailed up and down the East Coast, wherever helium eyed the New York metro area, says Richard Kushnier, erstwhile BD’s informal institution historian. There, Dickinson took a time occupation astatine the monolithic Singer Sewing Machine Co. mill successful Elizabeth, absorbed himself successful mechanical engineering and attended precocious schoolhouse astatine night.
By his precocious 20s, Dickinson had go a apical salesman for Baker Paper Company of Saugerties, New York, Kushnier said. But his large interruption would come in 1896, erstwhile helium met his BD co-founder, Maxwell Becton. Both were connected extended income trips — Becton for his Massachusetts-based aesculapian proviso concern and Dickinson for Baker Paper's New York City bureau — erstwhile they ended up successful the aforesaid bid presumption successful Texarkana, Texas.
Becton, the much affable of what Kushnier described arsenic an “odd couple,” adjusted the blinds successful the station’s eating country to assistance Dickinson work the greeting newspaper. To instrumentality the favor, Dickinson invited Becton to articulation him for breakfast. The 2 North Carolina natives, who shared Aug. 22 arsenic a birthday, made accelerated friends and traveled unneurotic to San Francisco.
Along the way, Dickinson couldn’t assistance but announcement the portability and popularity of Becton’s aesculapian supplies. Dickinson wanted in. However, Becton’s spouse didn’t privation Dickinson involved. So, Becton bought him retired and teamed with Dickinson.
“One mightiness accidental that they were destined to conscionable and partner,” Kushnier says. “As individuals, they whitethorn not person succeeded to the grade they did.”
Becton and Dickinson opened Becton, Dickinson and Co. successful September 1897, splitting the $8,000 investment. They sold solid syringes for $2.50 a popular retired of the 3rd level of a six-story gathering connected Vesey Street successful Manhattan.
After a decennary of sourcing supplies, Becton and Dickinson opened their ain mill connected Cornelia Street successful East Rutherford to churn retired blown-glass thermometer tubes and syringes. Since the precocious 1980s, BD has been headquartered astatine a sprawling modern field successful Franklin Lakes.
“Dickinson was a unit to beryllium reckoned with connected the manufacturing floor,” says Kushnier. “He made definite that ratio was the bid of the day.” The company's aboriginal days brought struggles, says Kushnier, but its wares yet caught on. BD became a subject supplier during the Spanish-American War and solidified that relationship during World War I, erstwhile the U.S. Army Reserve inducted Dickinson arsenic a lieutenant colonel. The determination efficaciously created a pipeline for Dickinson’s institution to provender the Army Medical Corps with surgical supplies.
Dickinson aboriginal gained the afloat fertile of colonel, a spot connected the War Department’s concern assembly and the rubric of Chairman for the Medical and Surgical Committees of the Army and the Navy during World War II. In 1942, Dickinson enactment his sanction and his luck to enactment successful an endowment money for a caller inferior college.
Founded by Columbia University Teachers College innovator Peter Sammartino and his wife, Sylvia Sammartino, the two-year vocation assemblage was backed by 16 section precocious schoolhouse principals and different education-minded citizens who wrote letters to assistance rise wealth for it. It was designed for those seeking jobs successful fields specified arsenic accounting, concern medication and concern management.
Dickinson’s $30,000 outlay matched that enactment up by Sammartino and family. So, the founding committee chose to sanction the schoolhouse aft the colonel. There was already a Dickinson College successful Pennsylvania named aft founding begetter John Dickinson. So, the radical sought to usage Dickinson’s afloat name.
“We had practically to bludgeon the Colonel into accepting the idea,” Sammartino wrote successful his autobiography, Of Castles and Colleges. "But erstwhile the ineligible papers went through, helium took quiescent pridefulness successful having his sanction associated with the tiny but absorbing acquisition development."
First based astatine Iviswold Castle — a turreted brownstone antecedently owned by the Rutherford National Bank of which Dickinson became president successful 1927 — Fairleigh Dickinson College opened with 153 students. Dickinson added his idiosyncratic interaction to the décor by picking out shelving, desks and different items; helium besides sent BD employees to assistance present and instal them.
The assemblage became a four-year schoolhouse successful 1948. It gained assemblage presumption successful 1956. FDU, arsenic it is present known, has since moved to campuses successful Bergen and Morris counties arsenic good as Canada and the United Kingdom. The schoolhouse sold the castle successful 1997. That operation present stands restored arsenic portion of Felician College.
Consumed by his institution and different pursuits, Dickinson didn’t wed until 1916, astatine the property of 50. His lad with Grace Bancroft Smith, Fairleigh Dickinson, Jr., would spell connected to tally his father's institution and service arsenic a New Jersey authorities senator.
Dickinson died successful June 1948 astatine 84 successful his stately location astatine the country of Ridge Road and East Pierrepont Avenue successful Rutherford. Today, the location is considered the anchor of the neighborhood — the aforesaid neighborhood where Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Ann Dickinson’s pediatrician, William Carlos Williams, besides lived — according to Rod Leith, the Rutherford historian.
Dickinson was interned astatine Hillside Cemetery successful Lyndhurst, which also holds Becton and Williams. The New Jersey Hall of Fame inducted Dickinson into its Class of 2019-2020.
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