James Le Roy “Mr.” Dixon - family friend
1872-1957
James Le Roy Dixon, or "Mr. Dixon" as he was known to us, was a dear family friend in California of both our mother, Clara Gray Klaisner, our aunt Frances Gray Hand and our grandmother, Bertha Thompson Gray. We must first tell the story of how they met.
On April 18, 1906 at 5:12 am a devastating earthquake hit the California coast, centered just north of San Francisco on the San Andreas fault. Over 3,000 people died in the earthquake and fire which followed in San Francisco, destroying 80% of the city.
Our grandparents, Bertha and Francis Gray, lived 35 miles south of San Francisco in Palo Alto. Our mother’s older sister, Frances was 6 years old. Our mother had not yet been born. Our grandfather was working as a carpenter on the Stanford University Campus. The earthquake was not as destructive in Palo Alto, but did damage buildings and homes in the area. Our grandfather walked over to the building he was working on, after the earthquake, meeting his boss who was sitting on the rubble of the building, weeping.
Later that day, Mr. Dixon knocked on the door of the Gray family home. He explained that he and his mother ran a boarding school for boys (Manzanita Hall, a feeder school for Stanford) around the corner from where the Gray family lived. The earthquake had knocked down their chimney making it impossible to cook for their boys. He had walked around the block looking for a house with an intact chimney, and theirs was the first one he had found. Would it be possible for them to use their kitchen? Our grandmother said, “Yes,” beginning a life-long friendship which extended to my mother’s generation and to our home while we were growing up.
J. L. Dixon (1872-1957) was born in Needham, Massachusetts to John and Hannah (Freeman) Dixon, who had immigrated from England and married in Needham in 1865. His elder siblings, Florence Annie (1866-1946) and John Frederick (1869-1947), each married but did not have any children (though Florence and her husband adopted a daughter, Dorothea Fenno). He also had an older sister Mary F., born in 1868, who lived only 12 days.
James Le Roy Dixon graduated from Stanford University in May, 1899, with a degree in Classical Philosophy. A few years after, Mr. Dixon purchased Manzanita Hall, an all-male boarding and day preparatory school established to prepare boys to enter Stanford University, and ran it successfully for a number of years. He eventually became a high school principal in Colfax, California.
Here is a favorite anecdote of Laurel’s about Mr. Dixon. He had been at our home for dinner. My parents drove him to the train station so he could go back to Palo Alto. He fell asleep on the train and missed his stop at Palo Alto, waking up as the train was pulling in to the San Jose station. Since he didn’t carry money, he wasn’t able to buy a ticket back to Palo Alto so he walked home. My mother was appalled when he told her.
Years later, after I had moved to Indiana to Pastor my first church, I went to a Ministers' meeting held at Earlham College. I remembered that Mr. Dixon often spoke of Earlham College, and Elton Trueblood, who was Chaplain at the Memorial Chapel at Stanford when Mr. Dixon met him. Dr. Trueblood was quite elderly, and when I asked about him, I was told that he wasn’t receiving visitors but I could call him on the phone. I introduced myself and told him that James Leroy Dixon was a close friend of our family. Dr. Trueblood said, “Look around you. Most of what you see, Mr. Dixon paid for.".
Then he told me the story of the time Mr. Dixon rode the train home from San Francisco, fell asleep and walked back home from San Jose to Palo Alto! I said, “He was going home from our house that night!”, I think we were both astonished that long after Mr. Dixon had died, the story that told so much about him had crossed years and miles and helped connect my new life in Indiana to stories from home.
At the time of his death, Mr. Dixon's wishes were that he be cremated within 24 hours. He also gave my mother a set of postcards on which he had written:
J.L. Dixon died on _______________.
There will be no memorial service.
He had addressed the cards to his friends and asked her to fill in the date and mail them!
James LeRoy Dixon, his parents and his siblings are all buried in Needham Cemetery, accessed off of Parish Rd. in Needham, Massachusetts.
Dixon at Stanford University (1896-99)
This section is organized chronologically, from September 1896, when J. L. Dixon entered Stanford as a freshman, through his graduation in 1899. It gives some fascinating glimpses into his life and what it was like 125+ years ago to be in the student body of a prestigious school. Click on any illustration to see a larger version in full detail.
1896 Campus Newspaper - Incoming Freshman
An Archeology major from Needham, MA
Daily Palo Alto, Stanford University, California, Vol. IX, No. 15, Sep 24, 1896, p. 1.
Registration Card
The registration card for Dixon's freshman year at Stanford was found tucked in his book Favorite Poems (see Career section below).
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