MICHAEL DICKMAN

After graduating from WVU, Michael moved to Chicago to work for an advertising agency. He left after a few months and moved to California. Initially, he stayed with relatives then joined a group of friends from the University of California in sharing a large house in Berkeley. After he settled in Berkeley, Michael received a call from one of his former Chicago agency clients at General Motors Corporation, who offered him a position at GM’s Detroit headquarters.

Although reluctant to leave California, the new job involved extensive travel and public speaking. Michael was now on a lecture circuit doing presentations on science, engineering, and technology at schools and colleges in Downstate New York, as well as the Southeastern and Northwestern regions of the United States. His GM summer assignments (auto shows, scheduling test cars for reporters/ analysts, etc.) included New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco.

After three years at General Motors, Michael was confident he could succeed in New York City, the media capital of the world. He left GM and moved to Manhattan in 1980 with no job and no prospects. At the time, New York City was near bankruptcy with a high crime rate and the most dangerous public transportation system in the world. Still, Michael persevered and landed a job with one of the world’s largest public relations/advertising agencies on Madison Avenue. He supervised numerous accounts including Honeywell (computers, avionics & industrial controls), Activision electronic games in Silicon Valley, and the Scottish Development Agency in Edinburgh, Scotland. Subsequently, he took a position at New York Telephone (now Verizon) where he managed state and federal regulatory issues.

With his expertise in computers, software, communications, and regulatory activities, he set up his own consulting business in Manhattan, Miami and Sag Harbor, Long Island. His clients included AT&T, New York Institute of Technology, Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs, Avaya Systems, and Spanlink Communications, among others.

Based on his consulting experience, he was invited to give a speech at the ‘National Association of Secretaries of State’ 1992 convention in Washington, D.C. Michael spoke about computer-based electronic voting by urging the Secretaries of State in charge of elections to encourage more absentee or vote-by-mail ballots as a path to advance electronic voting.

The premise for this speech to government officials was based on Michael’s previous consulting work for the military’s vote-by-fax operation during the Iraq Desert Storm war. To meet the election-day deadline, soldiers returned completed absentee ballots by fax, which was the first time the government accepted votes via electronic transmission — setting a precedent for future electronic voting.

A few years later, AT&T hired Michael from Miami to its Basking Ridge, NJ headquarters to launch a potential $100 million new business division. After he successfully launched AT&T’s new division, Michael headed communications at AT&T’s Research Labs and Network Operations (AT&T’s largest division), which had more than 50,000 employees. He was also the speechwriter and communications counsel for AT&T’s Chief Technology Officer/Chief Information Officer.

He won the Public Relations Society of America’s Big Apple Award for his marketing communications “Giving Speech A New Voice” campaign, which introduced a breakthrough text- to-speech technology invented at AT&T Labs.

Subsequently, he worked with a boutique agency in Manhattan that catered to high-level venture capital (VC) firms in New York, New Jersey and Tel Aviv, Israel. The agency provided in-depth competitive messaging strategies and market positioning for the VC firms’ investment companies.

He returned full time to Miami and quickly earned his Florida teaching certification through an intensive training program that led him to teach in Miami’s high-poverty inner-city schools. Michael, along with his faculty colleagues, were recognized for outstanding student academic achievement three years in a row as their school was ranked one of the top six schools in the state by Florida TaxWatch – a nonpartisan, nonprofit taxpayer research institute and government watchdog.

He is survived by sister, Mary Margaret “Mug” (Chuck) Lewis of St. Clairsville, OH; brothers, Thomas (Kay) Dickman of Walkersville, MD, David (Elaine) Dickman of Wheeling, WV, William (Joan) Dickman of Sykesville, MD; numerous nieces and nephews; and a host of great nieces and nephews.

Over the years Michael cultivated a second family from West Virginia University that communicates daily, vacations together and gathers in Morgantown for at least one WVU football game weekend each season. His long-time and loving college family for more than four decades includes: Linda Arnold from Charleston, WV, Patty Johnston and Larry Frail from Beckley, WV, and Las Vegas, NV, Richard Beto from Austin, TX, Janet Boyle from Wheeling, WV, and predeceased by Nancy Crislip Henry from Connellsville, PA. Nancy’s sister Marilee Mcfadden of Connellsville, PA has since joined as a welcome family member.

Michael has donated his body to West Virginia University for organ donations and/or medical research. He requested informal memorial celebrations of life among family and friends.