Celebrating the career of Chief Tony Dicks

August 22, 2023

The city of Barnwell, population just under 4,500, is home for Tony Dicks. He lives in the house his great grandfather built and his father was born in. The house was moved from Dunbarton to its current location in Barnwell when the Savannah River Site was built, moving from one “blink and you’ll miss it” town to another.

Mr. Horace Dicks, Tony’s dad and first mentor, was a volunteer firefighter for years prior to serving as City of Barnwell Fire Chief from 1972-77. Tony went to his first call at a young 4 years old, and even as a child, he was hooked.

“If I was old enough and strong enough, I could get out in his pickup truck and ride to the fire and look through the windshield. If I dared get out the truck, I’d get my tail tore up,” Tony reminisced. “Everywhere daddy went, I tried to go.”

Tony officially joined the department on his 15^th birthday. After high school, he started working at the local parts store but remained an active member of the department. He heard through a friend that the Orangeburg Fire Department was hiring, and it wasn’t long before he was picking up and moving a county over. As fate would have it, Tony met his future wife, Debbie, during his 4-year stint in Orangeburg.

The couple briefly moved back to Barnwell after Tony’s career took a minor detour when he started working in industrial fire protection. The Dicks would relocate to Islandton—where Tony served as volunteer fire chief—while Tony was working at Starmet, and he made the commute for almost 4 years; after a few years, he wanted something closer to home, so he worked for the Colleton County Parks and Recreation for a while, and then the Walterboro Fire Department.

Eventually, Starmet called and asked if he would consider coming back, prompting the final Dicks family move back to Barnwell.

“Getting back to Barnwell, I got involved with the fire department again as a volunteer and stayed that way until the plant decided it was time to let me go,” Tony said. “Right after that, I got the phone call that says, ‘Would you like to be the fire chief?’ I said, ‘Surely.”

“It took a while but in about May of ’99 they were able to approve it at the Council level and put me to work… I’ve been there ever since.”

Chief Dicks got his start on the state level when the Fire Academy was at its original location by the airport. It was through his work with the Academy that he would meet Joe Palmer, forging a friendship and mutual respect that is still going strong.

“Tony is one of the most personable and likable persons I have ever met,” Joe said. “Genuine, thoughtful, and sneaky smart.”

Tony was a regular attendee of the annual Fire-Rescue conference so he was familiar with the Association. When he was approached by then Health and Safety Committee Chair Doug Eggiman, Midway Fire and Rescue Chief (retired), he enthusiastically said yes. He would later serve on the Recruitment and Retention Committee. It was during his tenure on the R&R Committee that Joe asked Tony if he would like to represent South Carolina on the National Volunteer Fire Council, a commitment he upheld for a decade.

“I learned a lot about the South Carolina fire service and the South Carolina State Firefighters’ Association is well-advanced beyond some states that you think would just have it going on,” Tony said about his time serving on NVFC and networking with representatives throughout the country.

In addition to his longtime service as State Director for NVFC and work with several Association committees, Tony currently serves on the Heritage Committee, is a regular speaker for Leadership Institute, was a panelist at the Volunteer Criticality Summit in 2022, served as a national “Peer Review” for AFG/SAFER applications, was President of Lowerstate Firefighters Association, and can often be found at the grill cooking for a variety of Association events. Tony was inducted into the South Carolina Firefighters Hall of Fame in 2017.

Now, after 24 years as Fire Chief and five decades of service, Chief Dicks is retiring.

“I’m proud of what I was able to do at the fire department,” he said. “It took a while, but we were able to get things moving forward.”

“When you know a community like Tony knows Barnwell, you can’t help but advance your cause for the betterment of those involved,” Joe Palmer said.  “Tony has taken his experience of years of service at the national level and put in to play concepts that has brought BFD together and made an incredible farm team that now has persons working around the state.”

When asked about his proudest accomplishment, Tony gave the answer most fathers do: his children, and the fact that they each chose a service-focused profession. One of his daughters is a teacher and the other is a nurse. His son is a Captain at City of Florence Fire.

“The fire service was good for me, even though I went around it two or three different times,” Tony said.

Although he may be officially retired, don’t be surprised if you see Chief Dicks hanging around the new Barnwell station when construction is complete. Old habits are hard to quit.