The story of the life of A.W. Dicus (1888-1978) always intrigued me, but even more so since I moved to the area of his roots. For a time, I lived in his home town of Swayzee, IN. My wife works as a cook on the site where Dicus went to high school, now an elementary school for 5th and 6th grade. Just south of Swayzee, in a spot in the road called Normal, the Normal church of Christ (founded in 1857) still meets where Dicus was baptized while in high school. Upon his conversion, Dicus vowed to the Lord that he would develop his talents to use in the Lord’s service, as aided by formal education. In God’s Providence, he obtained that education and became a scientist, an educator, an inventor (of the turn signal, among other things) and builder, as he also engaged in the preaching of the gospel. In 1966, when Time Magazine declared that ‘God is dead’, Dicus, now aged and nearly blind, responded as a Christian and also a student and teacher of God’s Creation that ‘Our God Is Alive’. Though he is dead, his hymn of faith still stirs and feeds the conviction of generations after his passing.
Aaron Wesley Dicus 