 His father, William B. Dickinson, Sr. was an attorney and his mother, Alice Hillman Dickinson, in 1927 became the first woman elected to a school board in the state of Missouri.His uncle was the noted Pittsburgh physician and medical author Breese M. Dickinson and another uncle, Cedric Dickinson, was a Canadian journalist.Dickinson began his journalistic career as a reporter at the "Kansas City Star" after graduation from the University of Kansas in 1929.