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riental’s next parade will be missing a long-familiar presence. Tom Dixon, who rode a Shriner’s alligator cart on the parade route — and on everyday trips in Oriental — passed away Wednesday afternoon at his home on Freemason Street.

Tom Dixon and the Shriners’ ‘Gator he drove at a Spirit of Christmas parade in Oriental. WIth him is a friend’s dog.

In recent months, Tom Dixon was no longer remission from cancer. Last week he turned 80.

His son, Tom Jr, says his father “could get a dime’s worth of life out of a nickel.” His daughter-in-law, Teresa, remembers him as “somebody who enjoyed life to the fullest.”

Neighbor Susan King says her parents lived next door to Tom before she did. “My mother made this comment often about being Tom’s neighbor: ‘I never know what I am going to see out my kitchen window each morning.’ It remained true for me until Tom left us yesterday.”

“One day I looked out the window and the backyard looked like it was covered in snow. Tom had just returned from a hunting for Snow Geese, and the backyard was covered with white feathers. Mother was so right.”

Tom Dixon

Another neighbor recalls Tom explaining that he named his dog Zee because, he said, it was the last dog he would own. The dog predeceased him in 2011.

Tom Dixon lived much of his adult life in Raleigh, where he worked for a natural gas company and had a seat on the NC Utilities Commission. When he retired 17 years ago, he moved to Oriental. But his connection to town goes back beyond that.

Growing up in New Bern, he spent summers in Oriental with his grandparents, Nina and Will Dixon, who lived two doors up from the Neuse River on Freemason Street.

The home on Freemason where Tom would eventually come to live was a up a block and carried with it a story. Tom Dixon Jr says that the Cape Cod style bungalow was built by some fishing captains who had had a bad year. Tom’s grandfather Will Dixon ran the marine railway which the captains used to haul heir boats. They needed to pay their yard bills and in the absence of money from fishing, they worked off their debt by building the house.

When Tom moved in, the Gator cart could often be seen in the yard. That was the more visible part of his connection with the Shriners. Tom Dixon’s neighbors say that until quite recently, he took care of mowing the lawn at the Shriners building in Grantsboro, trailering his own mower behind his truck, which he used when he wasn’t riding the gator.

Tom Dixon is survived by his son, Tom Jr and daughter-in-law Teresa and grand-daughter, Amanda. He leaves three step-children and was pre-deceased by his wife Marjorie and his parents, Christa and Roy Dixon.

Services are planned for Wednesday October 7 at 2p at Oriental’s First Baptist Church with visitation an hour earlier at 1p.

Reader Notes:
For your information Tom was known to his New Bern friends as “S Cat.” It was my father, Charlie Thompson who gave Tommy his Job and started him in the gas business where Tom worked for my dad in New Bern. Tom and my brother Jim Thompson were graduates of classes of 1952, 1953 and 1954. Tom and I attended NCSU in 1959 while Jim had already graduated, Tom gave up on College and went to work in the gas business in I believe Lumberton NC, later to work for the State. I kept in touch with Tom and every chance i would stop in Oriental when I was racing sailboats in New Bern or in Oriental. We were Masonic brothers and brother Shriners. I last saw him in late August. Sudan temple lost a good member and I lost a friend and brother. I found out about his death by looking for hurricane info on Town Dock so thanks for your printing an article on Tom.
——-
Charles B.“Chuck” Thompson
A former New Bernian now living in Gloucester Virginia.
Oct 2

Posted Thursday October 1, 2015 by Melinda Penkava