Introduction

Biography

Dillon grew up in Fort Wayne, In­di­ana, where her fa­ther was a min­is­ter, teach­er and dean at the Fort Wayne Bible Col­lege.

She learned to play pi­ano at an ear­ly age, and while in high school, she was an ac­com­pa­nist at the Fort Wayne Bi­ble Col­lege.

She mar­ried Will­iam S. Dil­lon Sep­tem­ber 17, 1932. As mu­si­cians and com­pos­ers, they con­tin­ued their mu­sic­al mi­nis­try at the Gos­pel Ta­ber­na­cle in Fort Wayne.

On April 14, 1937, a tor­na­do brought down a brick chim­ney (over 18 tons) around and on her while she was play­ing the pi­ano at the Ta­ber­na­cle. While bur­ied in the rubble she was com­fort­ed by the know­ledge that she was safe in God’s hands.

After what was deemed a mi­ra­cu­lous re­co­ve­ry from ser­i­ous in­juries, Mil­dred and her hus­band be­came mu­sic­al min­is­ters for evan­geli­st Paul Ra­der. They ac­com­pa­nied him to Eng­land in Ja­nu­ary 1938, and spent a year there.

During the ocean voy­age to Eng­land, Mil­dred was awak­ened dur­ing a ter­ri­ble storm. The storm remind­ed her that when she was in­jured in the tor­na­do, she was safe in God’s hands. Music came to her in the midst of the ocean storm. In her dia­ry for Jan­ua­ry 18, 1938 is this en­try:

Wrote a lit­tle song about 4:30 a.m. This is when she put the words and mu­sic to­ge­ther for Safe Am I.

The song be­came the best known of hun­dreds she com­posed dur­ing her life­time; it has been trans­lated in­to do­zens of lang­uag­es and sung through­out the world.

In 1943 Mil­dred and her hus­band took over the min­is­try at the Sun­shine Gos­pel Mis­sion in Chi­ca­go, Il­li­nois, that her fa­ther-in-law, Mi­chael B. Dil­lon, had be­gun. They worked in that min­is­try un­til 1970.

In later years, the Dill­ons tra­veled around the world min­is­ter­ing to mis­sion­ar­ies at New Tribes Mis­sion sta­tions in Asia and through­out North Am­er­ica un­til they re­tired to Friend­ship Vil­lage in Schaum­burg, Il­li­nois.

At the Vil­lage, she was fond­ly known as the pi­ano la­dy be­cause she played pi­ano joy­ful­ly for ma­ny events un­til short­ly be­fore her pass­ing.