Ruth Lynn Dickinson answered an ad for a roommate in the 1960s, coming from Second Ponce de Leon Baptist church dressed in her Sunday best and white gloves to meet the two women who placed it.
The two knew Dickinson would be perfect. She moved in, and one of the women became her best friend for life, as they shared a sense of adventure that later took them around the world.
Dickinson supported her adventurous side by working for more than 29 years as an executive secretary at Plantation Pipeline Company. When she retired, she held true to her Southern lady ways. Instead of a retirement lunch she wanted a tea. And she got one — at the Ritz-Carlton.
Those who knew her describe her a quiet pillar of the community, active in her church and a Pink Lady volunteer at Piedmont Hospital, where she enjoyed delivering flowers to patients. She was a loyal, helpful friend who took people to doctor’s appointments and brought them food when they were sick.
“She had a great love of family. She was very conscientious, and her commitment was unique,” said Olivia Davis, a niece from New Market, Va. As a child, Davis looked up to her aunt so much that she asked her mother if she could be sisters with Dickinson.
“She and my grandmother lived on a farm in an old country house. I’d go visit, and I can remember I’d just run with excitement to go meet her,” said Davis.
Dickinson had a wild side, which she indulged by visiting all seven continents and close to 70 countries, including eight African safaris, riding elephants in India to get close to tigers, and being an early American traveler to China in 1978.
“We had to be sponsored, and a gang of 25 of us started meeting months before when we went,” remembered Polly Heyward, her roommate and best friend for decades. “We learned how to use chopsticks and to make wontons.”
Highlights of other trips included petting whales and riding camels, Heyward said.
Ruth Lynn Dickinson, 84, died Feb. 11, 2016, from complications of kidney disease. A memorial service was held Feb. 23 at Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church.
Dickinson was born Aug. 15, 1931 to the late Asa Lewis Dickinson and Evie Mae Kidd Dickinson in Stewartsville, Va. She had three sisters and one brother.
After high school, Dickinson went to business school, worked in Virginia, then moved to Atlanta in the 1960s.
Heyward said Dickinson was “like a sister” to Heyward, as loyal a friend as a person could hope for. As various friends got married, the friends remained single, becoming engaged instead in travel, learning and service.
“After my father passed away, my mother would travel with us, and we were quite a threesome,” Heyward said.
Riding atop elephants in India to see tigers up close was a highlight. The elephants would step on branches and brush to clear the way, and tigers simply walked about.
“The tigers weren’t that concerned with us,” Heyward recalled.
The two loved to go into fine hotels around the world and have tea, Heyward said.
Occasionally, they traveled by ship, but they were not interested in big liners.
“We went on smaller boats. We did the lobster cruise of New England, where every meal is made with something from lobster,” Heyward said.
In the last weeks of her life, a neighbor’s cat would sit at the back door every morning, waiting to be let in so he could visit Dickinson, Heyward said.
“He’d come in and hop on her bed,” Heyward said, or, if Dickinson could sit up, would sit on her lap.
In Dickinson’s absence, the cat still visits each morning, a bit confused and looking for his friend.
“This cat really loved her. He doesn’t know what to do without her,” said Heyward.
Dickinson was preceded in death by all three sisters, Juanita Dickinson Moorman, Dorothy Dickinson Temple and Imogene Dickinson Hubbard; and her brother, Warren Dickinson. In addition to Davis, several nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews and cousins survive.
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