By Chris Cunningham
The Scene staff
Don Dixon’s life has been a wild ride.
He served in the Army, worked on the railroad, built houses in Florida, hung out with a biker gang and donated a kidney.
“I bore easily, but I am content here in St. Louis,” said Dixon, 55, who stands out in a crowd with his white hair, bushy eyebrows and Fu Manchu mustache.
Today, Dixon is a general studies student at Forest Park and a columnist at The Scene.
He recently received the college’s Emerging Scholars award, which recognizes students who start in developmental courses and make quick academic progress. It comes with a $500 scholarship.
“I joked around and said, ‘Yeah, I know I am going to win,’” Dixon said. “But I didn’t think I was actually going to win.”
Dixon enrolled at Forest Park last spring after a 35-year absence from college. He claims he likes school so much, he wants weekends to go by faster.
“It has been three semesters, and I have yet to run into something that is bad,” he said. “You have free tutoring and night classes, and I rarely find my classmates are rude.”
A few professors have been especially helpful.
“Zita Casey let me run,” Dixon said. “Nicole Myers showed me how to critically think, and Dan Yezbick has taught me how to write, not only college papers, but how to write (in) different styles.”
Myers is a reading professor. Dixon took her Intro to College Reading class as one of his developmental classes.
Myers liked having him as a student because he was able to share life experiences and wisdom with younger students.
“Don was seen as a cool guy who was smart and could explain things in a way other students could understand,” she said.
Twenty-six students applied for the Emerging Scholars award this semester. A committee of faculty members selected the winner.
They based their decision on an application form, which asked students to list career and educational goals and give examples of how faculty or staff had made a positive impact.
“In the committee’s opinion, Mr. Dixon’s responses were well thought-out and the most responsive to the statements,” said member Don Cusumano, psychology chair.
Dixon enrolled at Forest Park as a photography major, but he got more interested in writing after conversations with Myers.
“I asked him if he had considered a career in writing, and he brought in a poem he published,” she said. “Before I knew it, he was writing for The Scene.”
Dixon’s columns have covered topics ranging from his experience donating a kidney to his opinion that people are too obsessed with hand-held electronic devices.
He also wrote about his work as a railroad inspector who was 10 miles away from the field where one of the terrorist hijacked planes crashed on its way to the Pentagon on 9-11.
“The impact was so severe that even though the mountains blocked the sound of the crash, the force of the jet hitting the earth at more than 500 miles per hour knocked us off the rails,” he recalled.
Dixon was born in Sandusky, Ohio, and grew up in Cincinnati. He has a younger brother and sister, Johnny and Heather.
Dixon briefly attended Ohio Visual Art Institute as a graphic art major but left after his girlfriend got pregnant. They married and divorced in a short time.
Dixon then joined the Army at 19. He served six years, spending four as a medic in Wiesbaden, Germany. He enjoyed the work, except when Marines got bombed in Beirut and were brought to Frankfurt for treatment.
“You get so much blood in your boots, and it tasted like you had pennies in your mouth,” he said.
Dixon left the Army in 1985 and moved to Indianapolis, where he met his future wife, Debra. They married in 1990 and divorced in 1992.
Dixon’s next stop was Panama City, Fla., where his parents were living. He started building houses.
“I like to build things,” Dixon said. “I can design your house, I can build your house, I can clean your house, and I can tear it down when you are done with it.”
Dixon later was hired by Transystems Corp. His job was inspecting the installation of fiber-optic cable along railroads throughout the Southeast.
Twenty years after their divorce, Dixon and Debra remarried.
“It was an interesting conversation explaining that to my family,” said Debra, a legal assistant at Lewis Rice. “They have always known Donald is the love of my life.”
After earning his associate’s degree, Dixon hopes to transfer to University of Missouri-St. Louis to do more writing. His dream job is working for the Riverfront Times.
Dixon considers his year at Forest Park the highlight of his life.
“To the cafeteria workers, to the instructors, to the professors, to the doctors, to the department heads, I have never been mistreated,” he said. “I feel like a king.”