Fitz Dixon a great friend of the coast

For the past several days, townspeople – year-rounders and old-time summer residents – have conducted, privately and individually, a vigil. The news that F.E. Dixon Jr. was dying in a Philadelphia hospital has cast a somber pall thicker than any fog across this tiny town.

Words were hushed, spirits low, as each day brought more grim reports about a man whose love of his birthplace is evidenced by almost everything around us.

It has been unique for us in Winter Harbor, wondering if bells should ring from every church and chapel when the death of Fitz Dixon is announced back here. After all, he was born in Bliss Cottage while the Dixons were summering on Grindstone Neck in 1923. And he has sculpted this community with firm – and caring – hands ever since.

Though certainly not a king or a pope, F.E. Dixon’s name in this town carries the same influence. He has been revered, respected, appreciated and deferred to by so many generations of Winter Harborites he might as well have been royalty.

Of course, all his money carried a huge amount of weight – and awe – but the way most folks think of Fitz Dixon is as a benevolent friend of the town and its people, who shows up every summer with a wide grin, an observing eye and an insatiable curiosity for what’s going on.

“How can I help?” he asked when townspeople wanted a school gymnasium and community center. “What can I do?” he asked when a historic building was proposed for the town library. “Where do I give?” he said when someone needed emergency help with expenses, or a church with a defunct furnace, or a town hall with a leaking roof and other critical maintenance.

He didn’t always ask. When there was an obvious need in the older days, he provided for a grocery store, or a gas station, or for an outreach clinic from Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth, some 25 miles away. As usual, Dixon stepped in with leadership, commitment and money to build the Eleanor Widener Dixon Clinic in Gouldsboro in memory of his mother.

Age or health issues didn’t deflect him from his dedication to our town and surrounding area. Just in the past three years, Dixon accepted ownership of all of the vacated U.S. Navy housing in Winter Harbor – three complexes of 80 housing units – sold them, put them on the tax rolls, and gave the town the net profits.

Just in the past two years, he has undertaken an ambitious initiative to aid the Schoodic Education and Reach Center by forming Acadia Partners for Science and Learning.

And he has only missed one summer in his almost 83 years on his beloved Grindstone Neck in Winter Harbor.

He didn’t miss returning this summer, and for that heroic effort – despite his grave illness – we are all grateful. The last thing he said to me after a telephone conversation was his typical signoff: “Thank you very kindly.”

Ring the bells, lower the flags! Thank you, Mr. Dixon. Very kindly.