Raymond Edward Dicks

Raymond Edward Dicks was a Navy veteran and longtime Savannah River Site worker from Williston, South Carolina, who died on October 3, 2026, at the age of 78. He was not a celebrity or a national public figure. His death was reported through a funeral home notice rather than news coverage, and this page draws only on that obituary and related public records, since no biography of him exists elsewhere.

Dicks was born on July 30, 1948, in Dunbarton, South Carolina, a small community in Barnwell County. In the 1950s the federal government built the Savannah River Site, a nuclear materials production complex, and in the process several towns in the area, including Dunbarton, were cleared and their residents relocated. His family was among those moved out, and they resettled permanently in nearby Williston. That displacement shaped much of his later life. He stayed closely tied to the people who had shared that experience, and he took part every year in reunions that brought former Dunbarton residents together to remember the communities that no longer existed.

As a young man Dicks served in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War, where he worked as a Nuclear Custodian. He went on to spend decades employed at the Savannah River Site itself, the same facility whose construction had uprooted his childhood home, before retiring. Outside of work he was known for his interest in history and genealogy, and for a habit of watching documentaries, reflecting a lifelong curiosity about the past and about his own family's roots.

His life was also marked by loss. He was preceded in death by his parents, Edward and Mescal Dicks, by his wife, Deborah Dicks, and by his daughter, Rachel Dicks. He is survived by his children Jesse Dicks and Miriam Hays, his sister Faye Lindell, several grandchildren including Alec Hook, Kieran Hays and Kristina Phillips, along with nephews, great grandchildren and other extended family. His obituary also names Gloria Sweat as his great love at the time of his death.

News of his death was shared by Folk Funeral Home of Williston, which published his obituary on October 4, 2026. There has been no public reaction beyond the funeral home notice and the condolences typically left by family and community members on memorial pages, and no cause of death has been made public. A visitation is planned for October 10, 2026, at Winfield Heights Baptist Church in Williston.