REST IN PEACE MR. DIXON

Roy Wallace Dixon II, 88, formerly of Cincinnati, OH, died March 23 in Melbourne, FL. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Barbara Katherine (nee Brown), and by two daughters Tara Dixon Engel (married to John Falldorf) and Regina Dixon Butler (married to Kevin Butler). He was preceded in death by his mother Beulah Margaret Dixon (nee Russell) and his father, Roy Wallace Dixon I.

Roy Jr graduated from Sycamore High School and attended the University of Cincinnati, earning a Bachelor’s Degree, Master’s Degree and the coursework for a PhD. He devoted his life to teaching, both at the college level and primarily in high school. He taught for almost three decades at Deer Park High School, a suburb of Cincinnati.

He was known for his colorful teaching style and for pushing his students to do college-quality work, often shuttling them to the library, teaching them how to take notes and conduct research, and offering them access to his vast array of books and resources. Over the course of his life, he amassed tens of thousands of books and had a particular passion for science fiction, classic detective novels and non-fiction history. He enjoyed telling stories about the Roman Empire and was a treasure trove of information about the British monarchy. He referred to his vast book collection as “the Dixon Library of Worthless Wisdom.”

In his younger days he was active in several local Science Fiction groups and attended the “Midwest cons” on a regular basis. His SF collection included pulps from the 1930s up to more modern publications.

He wrote and taught several curricula at Deer Park High School, including Film & the World, Modern Mythology and others, in addition to teaching history, psychology, sociology and government. He occasionally penned newspaper articles, which were published in Cincinnati and Dayton newspapers, and wrote several books, “Booms, Tombs and Dinosaurs” and “Mysteries of WW II,” which were not published, mainly because he never stopped revising them.

He was a true original who loved being a teacher more than anything else. He never stopped lecturing and always savored an audience. He and Barbara lived for the past two years at The Fountains of Melbourne and his favorite activity was having his daughters shuttle him to local libraries so he could buy bags of books for cents on the dollar in the libraries’ book sale rooms.

A private service was held. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to Vitas Hospice or another hospice facility.