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-- dictionary.com

There they are: The Dixon Men.  The three to the left, I never knew.  But over the past 25 years, one of my hobbies has been piecing together the life stories of these and other men (and women) whose work, travels, loves, struggles and random acts and choices -- not all of them good, by the way -- helped get me where I am today.

I recommend genealogy.  Not to find heroic ancestors but, as Daniel Webster put it, "There is a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors which elevates the character and improves the heart."  (Which, I suppose, is true even if one of your great grandfathers -- no, not one of these -- did six years in Joliet for manslaughter.)

Willis Lathrop* Dixon (1821-1893)

Born in Cayuga County, NY, my great-great grandfather spent much of his life getting around.  About 1840, he and his brothers went west on the Erie Canal to the new state of Michigan where they started farms in Cass County, just north of the Indiana line.  It was a community heavily populated by Quakers and other settlers from New York's politically progressive Finger Lakes region.  Dixon and his wife, Marion Olds Dixon, apparently became involved in the Underground Railroad and vague stories have filtered down of the couple smearing lard on their children's faces so they would darken in the sun and, thereby, provide some cover for the black children who were also often seen on their property.  He named his youngest son (my great grandfather) in honor of U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.), the abolitionist who had been assaulted on the floor of the Senate in 1856 after making an anti-slavery speech.

In 1852, Dixon and his brothers set off for California to find gold.  Like other Forty-Niners, they faced a choice: get to California the slow-but-safe way (around Cape Horn) or the fast-but-risky way (sailing to Panama, hiking across the swampy, malarial Isthmus and finding a second ship on the Pacific Coast).  They chose the latter and spent the next two years in the Sierra Nevadas where, if any riches were found, no trace has survived.  They returned to Michigan in 1855.

In the mid-1880s, when the Dixons' youngest, Charles, was freshly married and looking for a start, Willis and Marion decided to join the young couple in a homesteading venture in Ford County, Kan., near Dodge City.  Each couple took up a quarter section, built a sod house and commenced to fight prairie fire, storms and, most especially, drought.  Drought was the "official" reason the Dixons returned to Michigan in the 1890s.  But the fact that they gave up on Kansas shortly after Willis' death in 1893 suggests (to me) that it may have been the old rover's project all along.

*Willis was named for Willis Lathrop, husband of Zillah Whedon Lathrop (1775-1825), his mother's older sister.  In 1837, however, the Lathrops and the Dixons had a noisy falling out over an inheritance.  When Willis' grandson and great-grandson were given his name, they were assigned only the middle initial.

Charles Sumner Dixon (1864-1907)

After his Kansas experience, great-grandfather Charles had had enough of farming.  When he and his family returned to Berrien County, Mich., in the 1890s, he joined the street car system of Benton Harbor as a conductor.  He rose through its ranks and, eventually, became superintendent of the whole system.  In 1907, however, he had the poor luck to suffer a heart attack while chopping wood in his backyard.  Great-grandmother Isadore dragged him out of the sun onto the back porch but, within a few minutes, he was dead at the age of 42.

Willis L. Dixon (1890-1948)

Nobody knows precisely how Great-grandmother Isadore managed financially after her husband died so young.  But the fact that her children all did well -- one owned his own pharmacy, another was CEO of a major manufacturer, one was a physician and two were teachers -- indicates she managed to instill a certain can-do-itiveness.

Grandfather Dixon initially followed an older brother's example and became a pharmacist.  Not long after taking his first job in Grand Rapids, Mich., however, he observed, according to my father,  that the physicians he met "weren't any smarter than he was."  He graduated from the Loyola University medical school in 1916.  Grandfather spent World War I as a staff physician at Camp Upton, a U.S. Army base on Long Island, and, newly married, returned to Grand Rapids in 1919.

The 1920s, '30s and '40s were an era in which house calls were the norm and home care more common than hospitalization.  Grandfather did everything: birthed babies, set fractures and treated whatever other ailments came his way, often in the wee hours.  Grandfather also smoked heavily and recommended smoking to his patients as a remedy for "nerves."

As president of the county medical society in 1948, grandfather was also a leader in a textbook study of the effectiveness of fluoride in preventing tooth decay.  (Fluoride was added to the water in Grand Rapids, but not in nearby Muskegon.  Results were so dramatic that Muskegon dropped out of the study and fluoridated its water, too.)  Unfortunately, 1948 was also the year of his last heart attack; he died at 57 while traveling to my father's wedding in Philadelphia.

Willis L. Dixon (1922-2008)

My father grew up in Grand Rapids and also went into what was -- for two short generations -- the family business.  (Well, he HAD to; he'd already taken up golf, winning the Michigan Open in 1940.) After graduating from DePauw University in 1944, Dad headed to Philadelphia where -- in the space of one week in 1948 -- he graduated from Hahnemann University School of Medicine, buried his father and married the Quaker girl from Ohio whom he'd met in an automat on Arch Street.

After a two-year medical residency, Dad was commissioned a lieutenant (j.g.) in the U.S. Navy.  He was assigned to Salt Lake City where he spent the Korean War examining inductees and, not incidentally, I was born.

Funny thing is, I'd always considered my father a young, modern doctor.  In fact, though, when he retired in 1992 -- from an office located across the hall from grandfather's -- his "solo practitioner" format was nearly as quaint as grandfather's house calls.  After he closed the door, his patients were transferred to a group practice.

Mark E. Dixon (b. 1951)

Oh, you know me.  I'm your writer.

Mark E. Dixon

757 Upper Gulph Road

Wayne, PA  19087-2022

USA

610-971-0649

dixon_mark@verizon.net