Fitz Eugene Dixon, Jr.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fitz Eugene Dixon, Jr. (August 14, 1923, Winter Harbor, Maine – August 2, 2006) was an American educator, sportsman, and philanthropist.
He graduated from Philadelphia's Episcopal Academy, then Harvard University, after which he returned to Episcopal to teach English, French, and Health; he also coached the school's squash, tennis, and 120-pound football teams and served as director of athletics and assistant to the headmaster.
Heir to the Widener fortune, amassed in the meat-packing and streetcar businesses, he was listed in Forbes Magazine's 400 Richest Americans in 1985, 1991, and 1995.
One of his best-known civic accomplishments was the 1976 purchase of the Love Statue that currently stands at the head of John F. Kennedy Plaza in Center City Philadelphia. Dixon purchased the statue from the Robert Indiana studio after the artist had removed it from the city, after it failed to come up with the $45,000 he had sought for its purchase. Dixon bought the statue for $35,000 and gave it to the city. The plaza has since come to be known popularly as LOVE Park.
Dixon became an owner and investor of Philadelphia professional sports franchises, including the Eagles, the Phillies, the Flyers, and the Wings, but his most notable sports investment was the Philadelphia 76ers. Dixon purchased the team in 1976 from Irv Kosloff for $8 million and a few months later brought Julius "Dr. J." Erving to town for $6.6 million. In the short time he owned the team, it made it to the finals twice but never won a championship. He sold the team to Harold Katz in 1981.
Dixon bred race horses on his farm in Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania and was a member of the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission. He was a member of the association that owned Man o' War.
He served on the boards of the Fairmount Park Commission, the Philadelphia Art Commission, and the Delaware River Port Authority, and was at times chairman of all three.
He also served on the boards of several universities, including as chairman at Widener University, Lafayette College, Philadelphia College of Art, and Temple University. He was also selected in 1982 as the founding chairman the board of governors of the State System of Higher Education, which was founded to bring together several former teachers' colleges and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, the system's headquarters, the Dixon University Center, was named in his honor.
Dixon died of melanoma on August 2, 2006, in Abington, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, where he was interred in the Widener family mausoleum in Laurel Hill Cemetery.[1]
[edit] External links
- Fitz Eugene Dixon, Jr. at Find A Grave
- Obituary at the Chestnut Hill Local
- Obituary at 6abc.com
- Obituary at Temple University
- Obituary at the New York Times
