imageLongtime Jasper physician and founder of Dickerson Hospital, Dr. Joe Wesley Dickerson died Wednesday in a Lufkin hospital.

He was 96.

Funeral services are pending at Forest Oaks Funeral Home and Crematory in Jasper.

Condolences can be posted at http://www.forestoaksofjasper.com

Apart from his medical career, Dickerson, an Episcopalian, was deeply passionate about uncovering the origin of the Shroud of Turin.

In a Feb. 3, 1990 story in The Beaumont Enterprise, Dickerson said, "Within my heart, I think that it is (the image of) Jesus (in the Shroud of Turin). I think it’s a miracle."

Many, like Dickerson, believe the shroud, a linen cloth 14 feet long and 3 1/2 feet wide, bears the image of the crucified Christ. Scientists, however, claimed carbon dating invalidates those beliefs.

Dickerson was an observer in 1978 when scientists conducted a series of tests in Turin, Italy on the shroud.

We might want to say that SOME “[s]cientists, however, claimed carbon dating invalidates those beliefs,” but that that has been shown by a number of scientists writing in peer-reviewed journals to be incorrect.

Jasper doctor Joe Dickerson dies at age of 96 – Beaumont Enterprise