IR Veteran, impacts three countries, turns 100

If you have lived in Iron River for a while, you probably saw ‘that old guy who used to run on the side of the road all the time.’ That was Rex Dye!.Happy 100th Birthday, Rex. He truly was an icon in IR for many years. Who knows how many marathons he ran on our streets?
His life is exceptional in so many ways. What’s it like to live to be 100? His family didn’t have the luxury of an outhouse until he was 14. They didn’t have running water until he was 18, the same year he joined the army.
His army career was like a war movie. During WWII he served in Parachute Infantry Battalion 509. He jumped behind enemy lines. Some of the locals saved his life by hiding him from the German soldiers. He was an experienced veteran by age 23. God had His protective hand on Rex. Once when his platoon was going down a path, he heard the ‘sizzle of a land mine.’ He hit the deck and it exploded right behind him. His gun and helmet went flying, but the guy behind him got it in the face. Rex didn’t have a scratch. Another time he was walking down a path when he saw some leaves fall. He immediately started running and dodging, ‘sniper in the trees!’ The next day he noticed a hole in his clothing over his heart, and it went out under his arm pit. That was his closest call with death. He had some blood on him, but it was just superficial.
Rex married his beloved Bonnie when she was 18. He was a Staff Sergeant by then. She soon found out that living with Rex was not going to be easy, but they made it work and eventually became a team.
After the army, he worked as an equipment operator. He doesn’t have anything good to say about himself during those days: ‘I was a horrible person, I hated people’. He really didn’t sound like someone whom God would choose to be a missionary to the USA, Canada and Italy.
Along the way he became an alcoholic and then a drunk. He described himself as a ‘dry drunk, where one drink is too many and a thousand is never enough.’ After many years he finally sought help and attended an Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step program in the basement of a church. He was told that he needed to do all 12 steps or he would end up drinking again. He said that this program has truly helped hundreds of thousands stay sober.
One of the 12 steps was to confess to another living person everything he had done. For this difficult step, he ended up going to a little Baptist church where Jim O'Neill from Ireland was Pastor. He led Rex through John 3 in the Bible. Rex prayed to receive Jesus as his Savior from sin. When he stopped and the pastor looked up at him, he asked, “Are you alright, young man?” There was such a visible change. Immediately upon his conversion Rex felt the burden of his sin drop off. He walked to his parents’ house and boldly proclaimed, “I’ve been born again!” The date was December 16, 1956, he was 33 years old. He later recounted, “No human being was less worthy of being born again than me.” At his next AA meeting he recounted all these events. One of the older men in the group said, “Rex has gone overboard on the religious part of the program.”
Over the years, Rex shared his ‘12-Step Talk’ many times, always being careful to include his spiritual testimony. After his conversion, the guys at work asked, “What happened to Rex?”
Within two years of his conversion Rex was in Bible college where he would earn a master’s degree. He also started his first church. After Bible college he and Bonnie went to Canada as missionaries, where he started his second church. Later they went to Italy as missionaries where he developed a friendship with Nazarano, an Italian believer. The two of them started Rex’s third church, meeting in a garage at first.
Later, when he returned to Iron River, he joined the Iron River Bible Church. How much can God transform a life? He took a man who was tough, who hated other human beings and had been trained to kill and totally transformed him.
Rex liked to visit with people at his house. He loved to tell them how to get to heaven by believing in Jesus. He loved to read to them from the Bible in English, Italian and sometimes even in Spanish. Rex now lives at Medicare where he celebrated his birthday on April 16. Someday in heaven there will be a grand reunion of all those he led to the Lord during his life.
-s- Dan Waters