Bowling Green native Robert Dickey, an author and retired attorney, passed away Jan. 15 in Bowling Green.

Dickey wrote a series of books, “not in sequence or related, except for the fact that the common connection was Bowling Green,” said Ray Buckberry, a friend of Dickey’s.

His book,”Near Misses: Growing Up in Bowling Green with World War II, Fledgling Femme Fatales and Fallible Football Fortunes,” chronicles his life in Bowling Green from 1938, when Dickey started first grade, to 1950, when Dickey graduated high school.

Charles Garvin, who once owned Beech Bend, is the subject of Dickey’s book “Dynasty of Dimes: Eccentric Entrepreneur Engineers of Empire.” Dickey also served as Garvin’s attorney after he graduated from Vanderbilt.

His other books include “Greyhound to Vegas: The Odyssey of Hilda Reynolds Krause”; and “Goliath of Panama.”

Dickey, who resided in Bowling Green most of his life, moved to St. Augustine, Florida, during the latter stage of his life.

A 1950 graduate of Bowling Green High School, where he played football as a lineman, Dickey attended Western Kentucky University for a year, then ended up graduating from Centre College in Danville in 1954.

He served in the Marine Corps for two years and then worked as a reporter for the Daily News under then-publisher J. Ray Gaines.

Dickey later enrolled in law school at Vanderbilt University and graduated in 1964.

“He and I were in the same class,” Buckberry said. “And we were friends for life.”

Buckberry recalled when Dickey made the decision to go to law school he asked him to take a picture of him for his application to law school at Vanderbilt.

“I went down to meet him and we decided to take the picture outside,” Buckberry said. “I remember Bob standing up against a brick wall for the picture. I then asked him if he could take a picture of me. So we both applied to Vandy and graduated from law school together.”

Buckberry and Dickey both worked for the Bowling Green law firm of Bell, Orr, Ayers & Moore, and Dickey was also once appointed a Warren County magistrate by Judge Basil Griffin.

He practiced law in Bowling Green until 1988, then relocated to Louisville, where he continued to practice law, before moving to Florida in 2001.