HIGH PROFILE: Remmel Tyndall Dickinson

In January 2015, Remmel Dickinson received news no one wants to hear: He had cancer.

The then 65-year-old hadn't felt well for months, suffering from anemia, with the accompanying weariness undermining him and his second career as a Broadway producer of Tony Award-winning plays such as Memphis and War Horse.

Then came the abdominal pain, a trip to his doctor and the diagnosis. It was colorectal cancer.

"When you hear the word you think it's the end of the world," says Dickinson, a Little Rock native who, prior to Broadway, was a professional staff assistant in the U.S Senate for more than two decades.

"I thought I was going to die. I tried to get my affairs in order and all those things you do, which you hope you have time to do. Cancer is such a frightening disease. We have made incredible strides in treating it and preventing it and curing it, but it's such a huge challenge."

Things moved quickly after his diagnosis. He was admitted to CHI St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock on a Friday. An operation was performed the following Monday. A "big tumor" and a third of his large intestine were removed by a surgical team led by Dr. John Jones.

Fortunately, the cancer had not spread.

Two-and-a-half years later, Dickinson, 68, is healthy. He undergoes a battery of tests and scans every six months, but "so far, so good."

The diagnosis, the surgery, the recovery -- the process changes your perspective, he says.

"I am much more careful about my choices, and I am also more realistic about what I can accomplish," he says. "When you are 35 and 40, the sky is the limit on what you can [do]. Or I felt that way. Being 68, on the other side of cancer, you just have to start saying, 'No.' Otherwise you get spread too thin."

Dickinson didn't say no, though, when he was asked to be chairman of Friday's Gala for Life, a formal black-and-white affair at the Statehouse Convention Center in downtown Little Rock. The gala benefits the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.

Fundraisers shoot for $1 million with each year's gala, the institute's annual fundraising event, but proceeds often surpass that. Last year's event raised $1.2 million. Its success comes at the hands of many gracious supporters, institute director Dr. Peter Emanuel says.

"A significant proportion of the funds this year will be devoted to our cancer genetics program, both in terms of testing and in terms of counseling patients regarding their genetic risk for cancer," Emanuel says.

As gala chairman, Dickinson's role involves a range of duties, from determining the event's entertainment to fundraising, and he has been working with the institute's special events staff on the gala's New York and Broadway theme. For entertainment, Dickinson used his Broadway contacts to secure Michael Buble tribute artist Scott Keo, Broadway performers Kevin Massey and Dan'yelle Williamson and award-winning composer and musical director Ron Abel.

Even before his battle with cancer, Dickinson was familiar with the institute, having served three four-year terms on its board. He rolled off the board about the time he was diagnosed, and now he's back on it.

"It is a great institution for Arkansas, and it will continue to be a great institution for the nation," Dickinson says.

And when his work with the Gala for Life is complete, maybe Dickinson will turn his attention back to Broadway.

A GENTLEMAN

People who know Dickinson describe him as a gentleman.

Eric Peterson, who worked with Dickinson on the staff of former U.S. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) during the 1980s, says, "Rem is, next to my wife, my very best friend. He is genuine in every way. He is as honest as the day is long, a gentleman through and through, and as thoughtful, caring and reliable as anyone could possibly be."

Elizabeth Williams, a Tony Award-winning producer and Arkadelphia native, echoes Peterson's sentiment.

"Remmel is, first and foremost, a gentleman, and a gentleman producer who is very astute in his choices, has extraordinary taste and an unerring eye for talent," she says.

Dickinson, for his part, credits his upbringing. He describes his late father, Haskell Tyndall Dickinson, as an "ideal Southern gentleman." His late mother, Carrie Ellen Remmel Dickinson, made sure that he and his siblings, Nan Ellen Dickinson East and Haskell Lee Dickinson II, were exposed to the arts community while growing up in Little Rock's Heights neighborhood and later Cammack Village.

Tyndall Dickinson was president of the McGeorge Contracting Co. in Pine Bluff (where Haskell Dickinson is now president) and "one of the most respected men in Arkansas," Remmel Dickinson says. The senior Dickinson served on several boards, professionally and civically, and "lent his name and expertise to any number of good causes around here."

Carrie Ellen Remmel Dickinson was a descendant of one of the first white settlers in Arkansas and was a direct descendent of Elder William Brewster, who arrived in North America aboard the Mayflower in 1620. She was a longtime supporter of the arts -- the fountain at the Arkansas Arts Center in downtown Little Rock is named after her.

As a child, Remmel Dickinson's love of art wasn't found in the theater or galleries. No, he was more interested in architecture.

"We had to do an occupational paper in the sixth grade, and I wanted to be an architect," Remmel Dickinson says. He had an interview with Little Rock architect and family friend Noland Blass.

Following graduation from Hall High School in 1969, Dickinson spent 2 1/2 years at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., before joining the U.S. Army Reserve, which he served from 1971 to 1976.

He later enrolled at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he graduated in 1973 with a degree not in architecture but English. "I think I didn't apply myself in upper mathematics, and you had to do all that to be an architect," he says.

He developed an interest in government work, so he moved to Washington, where he became a half-day clerk with the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, working with U.S. Sen. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), who was chairman of the committee.

"Starting in the government ... under Sen. Fulbright was an incredible [start]," Dickinson says, but Fulbright's defeat by then Arkansas Gov. Dale Bumpers in the 1974 Democratic Senate primary "changed a lot of people's political fortunes."

Fortunately, in 1976, Dickinson met John Warner of Virginia, previously secretary of the Navy and then director of the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, when word was out that Warner was exploring a run for the Senate.

"He had a very famous wife, the actress Elizabeth Taylor, and I thought they were a winning combination," Dickinson says. "It turns out, they were." Dickinson worked on Warner's campaign staff and then on his personal staff as a professional staff assistant until 1999.

Peterson, who lives in Vienna, Va., worked for Warner from 1981 to 1985, alongside Dickinson. They have kept in touch ever since.

"Rem was incredibly loyal to the senator and able to tell truth to power, causing the senator and all of Rem's colleagues to respect, understand and respond constructively to his counsel," Peterson says. "Rem was conscientious, thorough and extremely diplomatic. He was doggedly determined to address the concerns constituents raised with Sen. Warner and do it in a way that caused constituents to realize that Sen. Warner had their best interests at heart."

"I enjoyed the people," Dickinson says. "Lots of personalities. I worked right around the corner from Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden. You see them in the halls all the time. You know each other to nod and wave and all that. Rarely talking, unless you were stuck in an elevator passing the time of day. It's fun to know them. I was a bit in awe ... all these huge names."

Dickinson retired from government in 1999, at the age of 50. It was time to return home.

FROM HOME TO BROADWAY AND BACK

By this time, Dickinson's parents were in failing health. He sold his home in Alexandria, Va., and returned to Little Rock to help his siblings look after them.

"They were in their late 70s and early 80s," he says of his parents. "I'll never regret it. It wasn't all illness and sadness. We had some good times." Tyndall died in 2002; Carrie followed her husband of 59 years in 2005.

"My parents were really my main focus for a couple of years," Dickinson says. "We were doing things together, and I was working in family projects. After their deaths, I really missed Washington and my old life, so I bought a condominium in Virginia, and that's sort of my East Coast headquarters, and I can come and go from there pretty easily."

Shortly after his mother's death, Dickinson met playwright Daniel Goldfarb at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts and told him he was interested in the business of Broadway and that he wanted to be a part of his next show.

The new musical didn't -- as Dickinson says -- "develop legs for Broadway," but through the experience, Dickinson met a number of influential people.

"The career just sort of opened up for me, one project at a time," says Dickinson of his time on Broadway, which includes Tony Award wins as a producer for The Norman Conquests, Memphis and Warhorse.

"I enjoyed the business of Broadway," he says. "People have said, 'That's such a change from politics to show business.' There is so much in common. In politics and show business it's all about three things: fundraising, personalities and promotion. You develop a certain skill set in politics which really carries over to show business."

In Dickinson's mind, producing is a simple concept: "A producer is looking for properties which he or she thinks will have a great chance to be a commercial success on Broadway." Some are hits; some never find an audience.

Williams, who won Tonys for producing Crazy for You, The Real Thing and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, says a successful Broadway producer has "judgment, focus, perseverance, collaborative skill, risk tolerance and the ability to convey" a passion for a show to investors.

These are attributes that Dickinson, whom she has known since they were teenagers in Little Rock in the 1960s, has in spades, she says. "It is totally disarming the joy that Remmel conveys in the presence of a show he loves or in a conversation about it."

Dickinson only produced family fare, productions his "sainted mother could have attended," and didn't try to re-invent the wheel, he says.

"I've been a part of some wonderful shows," he says. "I've had a very successful career. I was really, really lucky to have met fine professionals early on who I've been able to work with, but it's a big business."

Some of Dickinson's other Broadway works include A Time to Kill and The Bridges of Madison County, which was his last Broadway production before his cancer diagnosis.

"I'd like to have another big hit on Broadway," he says. "I very well might, but it's not the most important thing to me. I have become extremely close to my siblings and my Little Rock family. They really saved me with their loving care during my long recuperation." The family includes five nephews and one niece and seven great-nieces and -nephews.

Dickinson also relied on his faith during his battle with cancer. He was born and raised in First United Methodist Church in downtown Little Rock.

"My faith is ... I think it is strong now," he says. "It is an important part of my life.

"I'm just thankful to be feeling well and trying to be useful to my family and my community."

High Profile on 09/10/2017