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The remarkable Carl Dickson: 85 years old, 50 years with Adair schools Head mechanic at Adair Schools has spent 50 years in the school system and is still working. "He is the most remarkable man I know," his closest colleague at work, Transportation Director David Jones, says. Watch for Photos with this Story By Ed Waggener ed@columbiamagazine.com "If you had it to do over again, would you do anything differently?" He thinks just a moment and says, "No," and shortly after, he quietly repeats, "No." He is not talking about a single incident, but of a lifetime of 85 years with no regrets. His has been the longest tenure in Adair County Schools' history. Carl L. Dickson, the head mechanic in the Transportation Department garage becomes more of an inspiration and a marvel to those who see him each day. His career with Adair County Schools now totals 50 years, including one four-year stint as a school board member. Add to that seven years driving a bus and 39 years - all told - as a mechanic with the school district. The total is half a century. Having no regrets, David Jones says, the Transportation Director for the Adair County School District, may be what makes Carl Dickson such a special person. "I think that may be his big secret. Having no regrets. Not having to think about what might have been." At an age when almost everyone is trying to enjoy leisure, trying to reclaim lost health - often lost by inactivity - Carl Dickson is a man whose quiet strength and gentle demeanor grows out of lifetime of continuing service and satisfaction with having life in balance. David Jones says that's a big part of what makes Carl Dickson so special to him. "He's has his church, his family, and his work," Mr. Jones says. "He doesn't get caught up in world events." Mr. Jones doesn't limit his admiration. "Carl Dickson is the most remarkable man I know," he says. "He lives his life like we all ought to live it." Eisenhower was President when Carl Dickson began school career His career began when Eisenhower was President, spans the administrations of eight presidents, and at present, is in the waning years of a tenth. He's worked under seven or eight Adair County School superintendents, depending on how you count Al Sullivan, Adair County's Grover Cleveland, as one superintendent or two. Mr. Sullivan served non-consecutive terms. When he started in 1954, Harbert Walker headed the Adair County Schools. Since then, he's worked in the administrations of John Dunbar, L.W. Cole, Wallace Coomer, Al Sullivan, Kermit Grider, Al Sullivan again, Keith Young, and, the current leader, Darrell Treece. He has no ill to speak of any of them, but remembers two particularly. "I just was not a John Dunbar man," he remembers, "but I grew to like him. One thing you could depend on: If he told you something, you could depend on it." But his favorite superintendent comes easily to him. "L.W. Cole," he says. "He did more for the working people than any other superintendent. He had a way of talking with people and getting things done." Life began on Price's Creek Carl Dickson was born September 15, 1920, on Price's Creek, in western Adair County, almost on the Metcalfe County line. His parents were the late C.L. Dickson and Emma Shirley Dickson." He attended country schools at Prices Creek, and later at Gradyville High School, before finally graduating from Breeding High School in 1940. He drove to Breeding High School in his father's Model T Ford .In those days, jobs weren't plentiful in Adair County, and Mr. Dickson went to Glasgow, KY, to find employment. "I had to go two counties away to get work and to get a wife," he says. The bride he got there, Lucille Sexton Dickson, still shares his life. His family includes, besides his wife, three children, Cecil Dickson, Geneva England, Judy Spears, and Loretta Pennington; four grandchildren, Teresa Harris, Roger Dickson, Jeff Dickson, and Christopher Pennington; and now there is one great grandchild, Ashley Harris. They moved back to the Price's Creek area where he supported the new family by farming, raising tobacco and hay, and herding cows. He doesn't farm anymore, but his home place on Price's Creek Road is one of Adair County's prettiest farm settings. His first job was as a school bus driver He was a school bus driver when he started with the schools in 1954. The system had just six to eight buses then. "The drivers made more than one trip each morning and afternoon." The system only hauled high school students back then," he remembers. By contrast, today's system runs 44 buses daily. Carl Dickson's mechanics keep a total of 54 buses ready. Ten of the buses are spares. In 1958, he ran for the school board and served a four year term. When asked whether he liked the school board, it is one of the few times he equivocates. "Yes and no," he said, adding, "I wouldn't want to go back to that again." After he went off the school board after 1962, he went back to driving buses again. He did that for two years. First school bus garage started in 1965 In 1965, he started working with the first Adair County School Bus Garage, and for but a brief hiatus, he's been there ever since. "There were just two people working here, then," he says. "All we did was greasing and changing oil. I worked with Carl Wilson in a little frame building on the O.E. Grider place. It's gone now." The next garage was away from the campus. "We moved to that building that just burned, and then to Mr. Yarberry's building between the NAPA and then to the old Collins Garage building," he says. The garage expanded its service in Wallace Coomer's administration. "I told Wallace Coomer that if he'd get a jack and some tolls for us, I'd start doing mechanic work. He went right along with it," Carl Dickson remembers. Up to that time, mechanical work had been purchased from local garages and service stations. John Lee Akin was doing a lot of mechanic work before we took it over ourselves," he said. By that time, Arthur Scott was assisting Mr. Dickson, who was then head mechanic. "We changed tires. We changed transmissions," he commented about the changing scope of work. Present J.T. Coomer maintenance building came in 1970 The building which is now named the J.T. Coomer Maintenance Garage was built in 1970. "We moved from Campbellsville Street to this building then. Pretty soon after, we had our own gas pump." "The next change came after Arthur Scott died," he said. "Lucian Edwards joined the garage after that. Lucian worked for me. He worked until I took retirement. That was in January 1987. After I left, Lucian was the head man." "Arnold Burton came in after I retired. I stayed off eight or nine months in 1987 and 1988," he said. He rejoined the garage when he tired of retirement. Retirement didn't suit him. "Because I don't have hobbies to keep me going and I've seen so many people retire, go home, sit down, and die," he says. He's never smoked, but he won't say if he believes that has been a major factor." He went back to work at the garage, but not as the shot caller. "We went to a three-man garage around 1989," he says. "Lucian as still head mechanic. Carl Redmon began working with us." "When Lucian Edwards retired, I was head man again, and I hired Ronnie Cowan." "In 1998, Tommy Murray replaced Ronnie Cowan in 1998," and the crew of Head Mechanic Carl Dickson, Carl Redmon, and Tommy Murray still staff the garage, which, for the past two years, beginning in 2003, has been headed by David Jones. Other certified heads of the department, besides Mr.Coomer and Mr. Jones, have been Wallace Coomer, who became Transportation Director when new board took over, executed a coup, removed Mr. Coomer from office installed Al Sullivan in his first term as Superintendent, and moved Mr. Coomer to the Garage. After Wallace Coomer retired, J.T.Coomer, for whom the garage's building is named, took over as Transportation Director. After Mr. J.T. Coomer's death, Gregg Bardin took the job of three years until David Jones took the job. Mr. Coomer began what to this day has been a tiny Gradyville-Jones Chapel-Bliss hold on the office. All four of its heads coming within a two mile radius of the intersection of Jones Chapel Road and KY Hwy 80. They've seen a lot of changes at the Garage Over the past half-century, Carl Dickson has seen many changes. Roads have changed dramatically. "The number of gravel and blacktopped have reversed," Mr. Dickson said. Mr. Jones added, "Back then, when Carl started, almost all the roads the busses traveled were gravel; now almost all of the roads are either blacktop or chip-and-seal roads." Mr. Jones said he greatly appreciates the way Fiscal Court keeps Adair County roads in top shape. Bus capacities have really changed. The early buses carried either 32 or 38 passengers, Carl Dickson noted. "Now we have 66, 68, and 71 passenger buses," Transportation Director Jones said. "and in the future we may go to 80 passenger buses." The limiting factor is the school bus garage. It won't accommodate the longer 80 passenger models." The Adair County system's fleet of buses now travel about 500,000 miles a year. They go over 2,750 miles each day for 168 instructional days a year. That's 462,000 miles a day. "Plus," Director Jones says, there are 16 days of summer school when the buses travel 800 miles a day for another 12,800." Miscellaneous trips, including athletic, band, and field trips make up the balance. When the new Adair Elementary School comes on line in 2006, those numbers will increase, with two-to-four more buses added. Problems for the garage have changed. Carl Dickson noted that in the early days, fuel lines would freeze in wintertime. That's not a problem today, he says. This year, Mr. Dickson said, the problems were just the opposite. "It's the heat," he said. "The first seven days of school this year we had at least one bus a day break down, mostly from overheating." School starts three or four weeks earlier in the year now. In the 1950's, schools traditionally started in September, and the end of the first semester came after the New Year. Now schools start in early August. When buses failed back then, it took much longer to get word back to town. If the driver was lucky, he could flag someone down or get word a nearby phone. "Today," he said, "all the buses are equipped with two-way radios." The drivers simply radio in and the mechanics go out and repair it, or take them a spare bus. In the 1950s, buses all had straight transmission. "Today," Carl Dickson said, all of them are equipped with automatic transmission. They got power steering and power brakes. We didn't have those," he says. Buses are safer now, Mr. Dickson and Director Jones say When Carl Dickson started driving a school bus in 1954 didn't even have warning lights on top. Then, Carl Dickson said, "We only had the brake light which came on when we were stopping." Mr. Jones said that even at 85 years of age, Mr. Dickson still climbs on top of school to check lights and replace any which may be out. "He's thorough," Mr. Jones said. It took a terrible accident to bring it about, but school buses are much safer now, both Mr. Dickson and Director Jones say. After the Carrollton school bus crash in 1988, when a drunken driver, travelling in the wrong lane on Interstate 71, hit a school bus and 27 lost their lives. Alcohol was, at bottom, the blame. But serious structural and design deficiencies in all school buses are thought to have contributed to the great loss of life. "Out of that accident came the impetus for many of the school bus improvements in buses," David Jones says. Most of the improvements allow safer exits from buses, including roof hatches and side emergency doors. And a cage now must protect fuel tanks. And more volatile gasoline has been supplanted by almost universal use of diesel machines. Buses still don't have seat belts for passengers; the driver is, however belted. Even so, David Jones says, "School buses are the safest ride in America," citing National Highway Safety figures as his authority. And he draws strength from his church He draws enormous strength from his church, a remarkable country congregation whose people and grounds do make one nostalgic for bygone days. It's Price's Creek Baptist Church. It's in a pretty white frame building, with improvements which show that structure is loved. The view from the church grounds, looking west into Metcalfe County, are spectacular. It's located on Price's Creek Road, a byway paved on its original wandering roadbed, which is actually a shortcut in miles between Big Creek United Methodist Church on KY 80 to the old Iron Bridge off KY 80, coming in at the foot of Butler Hill, east of Edmonton. Don't ask them what their budget is. Money is handled in a simple manner. Johnny Wilson, a friend and fellow leader with Carl Dickson, says, "When we want to do something, we just see how much it will cost and give the money before we do it." The church averages 150 at each of their three-Sundays-a-month services. A tradition there, seldom seen elsewhere, are daytime revival services, held each fall, starting the first Sunday night in October and running for about a week. Danny Wayne Sexton is the pastor there. The church is a big part of Carl Dickson's life. That, the with family and work, keep his life in balance. A broken leg is about only thing which blemished his record of good health In his 50 years with Adair County Schools, he's had very little illness. "I've had pretty good health all my life," he says. "I stayed in Howard Clinic in Glasgow once with a broken leg, but other than that, I've had very little illness." He said, "I broke the leg wenching out a fence post."And he admits to just a little bit of occasional indigestion. But a set routine in his life, which includes being early to bed and early to rise, contributes to his well-being.Another big factor may be his entertainment. "I don't watch much Tv," he said, "just mostly Andy Griffith." Being an optimistic, forward looking man may have helped, too His own optimistic outlook may have played an important role in his health. When David Jones and Carl Dickson are together, they can be obsessed with school buses. Both are anxious to have better and safer buses. And they both are looking to a not-to-distant future. "We certainly need a new bus garage," he says. He said he wasn't too particular where it's located. He just wants it away from the softball field. That will save on glass replacement, he says. And he'd want the bays to be longer, to accommodate the longer buses they would like to have. You never hear the term, "Any more," used the way many seniors do to describe how awful mankind is becoming. He, for one, will tell you that good kids predominate today. "We don't have the discipline problems we used to," he says, and gives credit to the superintendents and the board. "They are good at backing us up. We've got a good board," he says. Because his life is in balance with work, he'll keep at it Carl Dickson is often asked if he ever plans to retire. "That I can answer," he said. "I'm just taking it one day at a time. I've thought every year about this." A big reason he doesn't is because he is so appreciated at his work. "I want him to stay," David Jones says. "He'd be hard to replace. He knows so much about school buses. And he does so much work around here." And so, this remarkable 85-year-old Adair County will keep at the job, one day at a time, still holding things in balance, still living his life without ever having regrets. Thanks to Adair County School Transportation Director David Jones for introducing us Mr. Dickson. David Jones is the son of the late J.L. Jones and Barbara Chelf Jones, who still lives in Knfley. He attended Knifley grade Center, Adair County High School, 1978-1982, where he was on the baseball team; graduated from Lindsey Wilson College when it was a junior college, 1985; then earned a Bachelors degree at Campbellsville University in 1987. He now holds a Masters Degree from Western Kentucky University. He and his wife live on Parnell Road, off Jones Chapel Road, in a home overlooking Gradyville. This story was posted on 2005-10-20 14:19:53
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