Sasee Magazine

Tucked away on a quiet street in Litchfield Country Club, Dottie Dixon and her husband, John, live a quiet and satisfying life. Dottie is a well-known local artist who has won numerous awards and is exhibited in several local galleries. Her work has appeared on the cover of Sasee twice in the past few years. A lovely and graceful 80 years of age, Dottie stays busy with her art, church activities and spending time with her friends and family. Her home is lovely and welcoming; filled with family heirlooms and Dottie’s colorful artwork.

The day Dottie and I visited we sat in her kitchen. Over coffee and an impressive array of delicious homemade cookies, Dottie reminisced about her life and the changes she has seen in her eighty years.

Home has been many places for Dottie. Born in Columbia, S.C., by the time she graduated high school, she had attended thirteen different schools; moving around the Southeast with her father’s job. In 1946, Dottie’s father bought the Ford dealership in Myrtle Beach, which at that time was located in the heart of downtown. Seventeen year-old Dottie left Columbia College to move here and work in the family business.

“I came home and worked for Daddy. At that time, he also had the first taxicab business in town. Most of the vacationers, or summer people, didn’t have telephones, and their telegrams had to be delivered by cab, so Daddy’s cab drivers delivered them. Back then, those who did have telephones called a central operator who placed your call. She knew everybody, so if you called for someone who wasn’t home, she would tell you you’d have to call back later, much like many other small Southern towns.”

Dottie went on to say that, back then, Myrtle Beach had only two lanes of traffic; one going north and one going south. And, the summer tourist season had a definite beginning and ending; not like now, and once in a while someone new would move here permanently, but not often. After the busyness of the summer, everything settled down. Everyone knew everyone.

Dottie became Miss Myrtle Beach in 1948, before the first Sun Fun Festival in 1951. Dottie laughed remembering that, while people dressed more formally then, during the Sun Fun Festival everyone had to wear beachwear or be put in “jail,” and had to be bailed out. The bail money was used for the new Ocean View Memorial Hospital. It was all great fun for Dottie, even though she says she “didn’t have any talent!”

“The Ocean Forest Hotel was big then,” remembers Dottie. “We all loved The Patio, which was the open air dance floor right beside the hotel, facing the ocean. You could see the stars – it was just beautiful! Of course, it was too expensive to go to very often. Big bands like Dean Hudson and his Orchestra performed there. The Circle Theatre was also in the Ocean Forest Hotel. I was fortunate enough to be one of the ushers, and so I got in free. The seats were set up in a circle around the stage. We had some fairly famous actors and actresses perform, like Veronica Lake, Robert Webber and Robert Wagner. There was a lot going on here then. State-wide conventions came to the hotel, and locals would go there for dinner. It was a wonderful place.”

Dottie’s grandmother lived in the Lowcountry near Charleston, and once when she and her mother visited, Dottie’s uncle introduced her to a few Citadel Cadets. While at another open-air dance floor on the Isle of Palms with one of them, Dottie met Bill Beale, another Citadel Cadet. Three years later, after Bill received his commission, they were married. Dottie was 20 years old.

Dottie and Bill moved from post to post until he was sent overseas to serve as a radar operator in a bomb group during the Korean War. Dottie and her young son, Billy, moved home to Myrtle Beach. In August of 1951, Bill’s B-52 bomber was shot down over North Korea carrying eleven men. For nearly a year, Dottie did not know if her husband was alive or dead. Finally, she learned that her husband was a prisoner of war.

For three years Dottie worried every minute about her husband. “It was the not knowing that was the worst,” she remembers. “During that time, Life magazine did a story on me, because I was the wife of a prisoner of war. After Bill’s release, Dottie had another child, a daughter, but tragedy struck five years later when Bill was killed during a routine training flight in N.C., leaving her with two children, six and twelve.

Eventually, Dottie moved back to Myrtle Beach into a home on Pine Lakes Dr., and, soon after her move, met a widower from Mullins, S.C., with three small children. In just a few short months, Dottie married John Dixon and moved to Mullins. He had lived there all of his life and was in the tobacco warehouse business. After her short and tragic first marriage, Dottie had found the love of her life, and thus began a long and satisfying marriage of 44 years. John says today that he married Dottie for her delicious homemade cookies!

“John’s children were ten, seven and three, and mine were sixteen and nine. We had some stormy times trying to blend our families, but it worked! We lived in Mullins for 20 years and raised our family. That was the longest I had lived in one place, and Johnny tells the story that after the first year we were married I started getting restless, and we finally realized that I felt like it was time to move! Now, we have four beautiful grandchildren, and see our children as much as we can. The children and their families come to Pawleys every year.”

Dottie and John retired to Litchfield 24 years ago. Dottie enjoys her church circle and, for the past fifteen years, has painted every Monday with Danny McLaughlin. She and her fellow artists have formed a tight-knit group. She loves to cook and is well-known for her delicious cakes.

“I have always loved to cook. Johnny likes to eat, and I like to eat, so I cook! My favorite thing to bake is my pound cake, probably because it’s such a joke with my son. Every year the family wants a pound cake when they come to Pawleys. One year my son asked for a cake, my grandson asked for a cake and my granddaughter asked for a cake. So, I made three pound cakes for them for the week. Of course, it all got eaten – they hide it from each other!”

“I’ve had people in the past tell me I’m a survivor and I’ve about decided I am. I am a survivor. All the bad things that have happened to me have brought me closer to God. I believe that in every bad thing there is something good – we don’t always find it, but it’s there. That’s been true in my life.

And where is “home” for Dottie? “Why, wherever I am!”