From left: Paul Willson, Eldie Dickey, Rick Lay
When Rick Lay was in grade school, he was an average student. His fifth grade teacher, Eldie Dickey, changed that.
“Up through fourth grade, I was a C student, I was an average student,” Mr. Lay said. “In fifth grade, Eldie took me one day, put his arm around me, and said ‘listen, you’re not average. You have a very great mind, and there’s no reason for you to be making grades like that.’ And nobody had ever told me that. Nobody had ever told me ‘you’re smart; you really are. And you can make good grades.’ You can see my grade card turned around, and I was making A’s and B’s from then on.”
Mr.
Dickey began teaching at Ingleside Elementary School in Athens in 1958. He taught more than 30 years, serving as a teacher at Ingleside, a related math instructor and assistant director at the Technology Center, and a staff member at the State Department of Education.
“I taught for…years, and I never regretted getting up in the morning. Never,” Mr. Dickey said. “I always enjoyed it. I had fun. [My former students] might say they had fun, but I had more fun. I never had a bad day teaching. I always looked forward to getting up in the morning and going to school.”
Many years later, Paul Willson and Mr. Lay have decided to honor their former teacher by establishing a scholarship at TWC in his honor. The Eldie Dickey Annual Scholarship will award a minimum of $1,000 annually to a TWC student from McMinn County who has served in the United States military and has demonstrated financial need. Mr. Dickey chose to have the scholarship awarded to a veteran because of his military service. Mr. Dickey served with the 112th Infantry during the Korean Conflict. He later retired from the Tennessee National Guard as a First Sergeant, and he also served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, retiring as a Chief Master Sergeant.
Mr. Willson and Mr. Lay both credit Mr. Dickey with having an impact on their lives and are using this opportunity to give back.
“Rick and I would love to honor Eldie,” Mr. Willson said. “[For him] everything was a lesson. He did teach that you could do things differently.”
To emphasize this point, Mr. Lay recounted a story of his time in Mr. Dickey’s class.
“We were going to have a test the next day, and everybody said ‘we haven’t gone over this yet,’” Mr. Lay said. “He said ‘don’t worry about it; I’ll go over it with you in the morning.’ We get there that morning, and he says we’re going to have the test. We said ‘you haven’t gone over it yet.’ He put the book on the floor, hopped over it, and said ‘there, I went over it with you.’ Another student said ‘that’s not fair,’ and he said ‘don’t ever depend on anybody else to do what you’re supposed to do. It’s up to you to study this. Don’t depend on me or anybody else.’”
As Mr. Willson and Mr. Lay stated, Mr. Dickey had a strong impact on many of his students. Mr. Willson and Mr. Lay want to encourage other students of Mr. Dickey’s to consider contributing to the Eldie Dickey Annual Scholarship fund as well to help honor their former teacher.