Fitz Dixon, former Sixers owner and long-time civic leader, dies
wazzzy
Fitz Eugene Dixon, Jr., 83, a sportsman and civic leader, who earned
Philadelphia's gratitude by making Dr. J. a Sixer and for putting the
LOVE statue back on its pedestal at JFK Plaza, died today of melanoma.
Mr. Dixon descended from the grandest of old Philadelphia families, but
wanted to be considered an ordinary man and was proud of his career as
a teacher and coach.
He was heir to the Widener fortune, estimated at about $400 million a
decade ago, and often wore his grandfather's emerald ring, handed an
emerald ring that his grandfather gave to his grandmother as she
boarded a lifeboat from the sinking Titanic.
Mr. Dixon, who lived at Erdenheim Farm, a 500-acre estate near
Whitemarsh, had no power base as educator, politician, religious leader
or businessman, but he was a kind of civic jack-of-all-trades who
touched countless institutions in the region.
A civic jack-of-all-trades, he was a member and former chairman of the
Art Commission, the Fairmount Park Commission and the Delaware River
Port Authority. For a time, he owned the 76ers basketball team. In
addition to the Sixers, he once had a share of the Phillies, the Eagles
and the Flyers and all of the Wings, a lacrosse team. He raised tons of
money for a variety of causes, including PAL and Abington Hospital and
was head of the board of trustees at Widener University and at Temple
University.
Two of his best known contributions were the signing of Dr. J and the
saving of the LOVE statue.
He save the LOVE statue in 1968 when the studio of Robert Indiana, who
created the work and lent it to the city for display during and after
the Bicentennial, issued an ultimatum to the city: Either buy it or say
good-bye to it. The city did not have the $45,000 asking price so LOVE
was soon on a truck and bound for New York.
Spurred by the outcry from Philadelphians, who by that time had fallen
in love with LOVE, Mr. Dixon bought it (for just $35,000) and brought
it back.
It cost Mr. Dixon many times that - about $6.6 million - to bring Dr.
J. to town in 1976, only a few months after he had bought the team from
Irv Kosloff for $8 million.
When he learned that Erving was available, he never flinched, though he
had never seen the Doctor play, hardly knew him even by reputation and
had to outbid both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Milwaukee Bucks for
his services. But then, he had the means.
Mr. Dixon was the great grandson of P.A.B.Widener, "the traction king,"
who made $50,000 selling mutton to Union Troops in the civil war and
used that as a stake to develop more than 500 miles of streetcar lines
in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Pittburgh and Baltimore. Besides,
he helped organize U.S. Steel, American Tobacco and International
Merchantile Marine, which owned the Titanic - on which his son and
grandson died in 1912.
His grandfather, George, married Eleanor Elkins, whose father, William,
made $30 million from public utilities, Standard Oil and in Widener's
streetcar schemes.
George and Eleanor had three children. One went down (with George
himself) on the Titanic. Another, William, died in 1971. The third was
Eleanor, Mr. Dixon's mother, who divorced the senior Dixon when her son
was four. At the death of his mother and uncle, he inherited the entire
Widener/Elkins fortune.
Born in Maine, he lived much of his life on Erdenheim Farms in a
60-room mansion which had a branch of the Wissahickon creek flowing
beneath one of its balconies.
On the grounds in addition to the main house were a landing strip for
Mr. Dixon's plane (which took him to other homes in Florida and Maine),
a one-mile race track, indoor tennis courts and pool, a 30-room
mansion, greenhouses, formal gardens sporting $1 million worth of
flowers, barns for prize-winning chariot sheep, black angus cattle and
some thoroughbred race horses, champion jumpers and dressage horses.
Among the fleet of 20 vehicles in the garage were his Rolls Royce and
Mercedes Benz. He said he preferred the Mercedes, but when he went he
owned the Sixers and went to practices, he took the Rolls. So many
players owned Mercedes's, he had to take the Rolls so they would know
who's boss, he once said.
He was a graduate of Episcopal Academy and attended Harvard University.
He was 4-F during World War II.
After college, he returned to the area and, for 16 years, taught
English and French at his alma mater, Episcopal Academy, coached its
squash, tennis and 120-pound football teams and became its athletic
director.
His uncle, George D. Widener, encouraged him to become a doctor or
lawyer, a position more in keeping with his stature, but Mr. Dixon had
an independent streak and stayed at the school. He also wore a blazer
and gray slacks instead of suit and tie favored by the rest of the male
faculty.
Mr. Dixon believed in work and pitied those who did none. His
philosophy: You only get out of life what you put into it.
"I believe I'm the only member of the so-called Widener family who ever
did work, who ever did take home a salary. But that's the greatest
experience you can have," he told a reporter in 1976.
"I'm fortunate enough that I don't have to go out there and earn a
paycheck," he continued. "But I couldn't sit home and do nothing.
Christ, I'd be a martini drunkard at the end of six months."
He was described as unpretentious and disliked being thought of as rich
or socially connected. "I'd much rather be an ordinary person and
thought of as an ordinary person," he said.
He said wealth was not the measure of a person. "But it's how you use
it that's valuable." He often said that having so much money was a
burden, one he sometimes wished he didn't have at all.
When his daughter Ellin decided not to debut he was pleased. "The days
of big social bashes are gone," he said. "It's foolish to fritter away
money like that. Foolish."
He was deeply involved in the life of the region.
His contributions helped save Pennsylvania Military College from
bankruptcy, and the school was renamed Widener University in gratitude.
There is a Dixon Oval at the Devon Horse Show, named after Mr. Dixon
contributed $30,000 to renovate it.
Generations of politicians - Frank Rizzo, Richard Thornburgh and others
- owed much to his largesse. He backed Drew Lewis's campaign against
Milton Shapp with $35,000 contribution and a $250,000 loan - of which
he forgave $190,000.
Mr. Dixon's donation and other contributions enabled the Philadelphia
Museum of Art to acquire a John Singleton Copley portrait from the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania for $4 million in 2000.
Mr. Dixon's gift of $5 million to the Abington Memorial Hospital Dixon
School of Nursing in Willow Grove in 2001 allowed the college to offer
scholarships and interest-free loans forgiven with a work commitment of
one to two years at the hospital.
But it was as a sportsman that he was best known.
In that, he had a head start. His uncle once owned a piece of the
Phillies, raised thoroughbreds at Erdenheim and in Lexington, Ky., and
was a better than average tennis player. Mr. Dixon learned the sport
from the tennis pros who were guests at Erdenheim.
His father had owned the Arrows, the city's first hockey team. He also
owned the Eagles in the early 1930s and sold the team for $4,500 in
1936.
Mr. Dixon was a member of the association that owned Man-O-War, and
once tried unsuccessfully to work out a deal to purchase the Garden
State Race Track.
Some of his happiest days, he once said, were spent as coach of the
squash, tennis and 120-pound football teams at Episcopal Academy, where
he was also athletic director.
When he coached, he always dressed in white shorts - no matter how cold
- and he always led his team on a quarter-mile jog around the track to
warm up.
But what he really wanted was to own a pro team, and not just a piece
of one, either. "It was an itch I always wanted to scratch," he said
when he bought the 76ers in 1976.
For a time, before Jerry Wolman owned the Eagles in the 1960s, he owned
a small piece of the team. An ardent booster, he and his friends -
Dixon's Quarterbacks, they were called - met in his superbox for
brunch, cocktails and cheering whenever the Eagles played at home.
Though he was an eager suitor for ownership of the club, reports said
he turned down the opportunity to buy it once from former owner Leonard
Tose because the terms were not right.
In the early 1970s, he owned a quarter interest in the Flyers, but that
was unsatisfactory because he was not the majority owner.
So, he bought the Wings, a professional lacrosse team, about 1975, and
lost more than a half-million dollars on it before the league went
under and took the Wings down with it the following year.
In '76 - appropriately, - he bought 76ers, a move that gave him what he
wanted: control of a high-profile club he could run as a business and,
hopefully, build into a championship team that would be his gift to the
city.
In the beginning, all went well. The team's payroll was high, but it
was stocked with talent. All that was needed to make money was for the
team to draw an average of 17,000 spectators per game. And with Dr. J.
on the team and a championship practically assured, how could he miss?
It never happened. Mr. Dixon's team got to the NBA finals twice, but
won no championship. Attendance fell to about 12,000 a game and, in
1980, in a semi-final playoff game against the Milwaukee Bucks, it hit
bottom. Only 7,700 fans showed up for a game on Easter Sunday, an
embarrassment to the city and to Mr. Dixon.
His relationship with the coach, Gene Shue, who had taken over a 9-73
team and made it a play-off grade squad, were never good and turned
bitter when, after one particularly frustrating loss, he confronted the
coach in the middle of a press conference to demand, "Well, what are
your excuses?"
Shue was fired when the team led off with a 2-4 record the following
November.
His relationship with the media also turned sour, and reporters began
to see him as a hard-driven, bad-tempered and imperious man who liked
to throw his weight around and who didn't like to lose.
Instead of sitting in the owner's box during games, he stationed
himself in a seat under the east basket and became the Sixers' number
one fan, cheering the players and berating officials when calls went
against them.
He forbid photographers from passing in front of him and barred vendors
from selling refreshments near his seat. He once allegedly kicked the
shin of a man who walked in front of his seat while his team was
playing and slammed down the phone in the ear of a reporter who asked
him about the folding of the Lacrosse league.
He had his bodyguard escort out any spectator who got between him and
the action.
Despite the negative press, Mr. Dixon seemed committed to the team. In
the late 1970s, he told reporters the Sixers would stay in the family
as long as he or his son, George, were alive.
But, in 1980, shortly after being embarrassed by the low series
turnout, frustrated by the decline in attendance and angry at the
financial losses that added up to over $1 million, he sold out to
Harold Katz.
It ended his romance with sports ownership.
But Mr. Dixon continued to support local sports. For a time, he
regularly attended Widener and Temple University football games.Though
provided with a special box at Widener and a pass to the press box at
Temple, he never used them. He sat with the students and faculty.
A fan of Temple rowing, he paid $10,000 for a shell for the Temple 8.
When the crew went undefeated during the 1983 season and won the Dad
Vail Regatta, he came up with $10,000 more to send the crew to England
for the Henley Regatta - the World Series of sculling.
Mr. Dixon was also active with PAL, contributing generously and serving
as a member of its board of directors. In 1983, he was given the PAL
Award. His work with PAL and other sports activities earned the John B.
Kelly Athletic Award the following year.
Mr. Dixon owned racehorses and champion show-jumpers and dressage
horses. He was, for a time, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Racing
Commmission. His daughter, Ellin, was at one time one of the country's
leading riders in dressage.
bway...@gmail.com
70s, Fitz Dixon lived a couple miles away on a big estate.
Mind you, when I say "big," it wasn't anything like the huge Widener,
Elkins and Dixon estates that once populated the area, which were some
of the most magnificent estates in America. Fitz' house sat on a large
tract of farmland, but the house in the middle of it was a rather
modest one.
In the 80s, some time after he sold the Sixers, he sold the house to
Bill Cosby, who remodeled it. I believe Cosby's parents still live
there; it's the house where the alleged sexual harrasment that Cosby
was sued for took place.
-Tim