Last week, news broke about a fire at a trailer park in Augusta County that involved two of my favorite teachers from the former Crimora Elementary School—Donald and Iva Dixon.
The Dixons lost their home in the December 12 fire, which also caused severe damage to a neighboring trailer, according to reports.
Although the media didn’t name the Dixons—who retired from teaching years ago and have since faded from public attention—the news reached me through an email from local photographer Marg Johnson. She later shared a GoFundMe organized by Sabrina Halterman Brown, another former Crimora Elementary student.
“If all of us from Crimora school come together, we can really make a difference in their lives,” Brown wrote on the fundraising page.
Count me in. I can’t imagine where I’d be today without the Dixons and the other amazing teachers at Crimora Elementary. The school was closed in the late 1980s because the county deemed it too small to meet community needs.
Progress has its place, but when the school closed, Crimora—where I grew up and still think of as home—lost something it could never replace.
Back then, a lot of us were trailer-park kids. We lived in homes taxed as personal property, much like cars, though our families often spent more on a car than on the trailers we called home.
Out in the northeast corner of the county, we were far from conveniences—20 minutes to the nearest stoplight, 30 minutes to the county library. There was no cable TV, no internet back then. All we had was that school, and it was everything.
And the Dixons were its heart.
Mr. Dixon taught seventh-grade math and social studies and unofficially acted as assistant principal. He had a reputation—one of respect and maybe a little fear. This was when paddling still existed in schools. I don’t know if he ever paddled anyone, but the idea was enough to keep us in line.
Passing his social studies class meant memorizing and reciting the Preamble to the Constitution—a rite of passage for generations of Crimora kids. Years later, I earned a degree in constitutional law from UVA, but I never got the chance to go back and tell him.
If Mr. Dixon was the stern dad of Crimora Elementary, Mrs. Dixon was the school mom.
She taught English, and for me, she was the first to notice that I might have a gift for writing. Her encouragement set me on a path I didn’t yet realize I’d take.
She was also a University of Maryland basketball fan, during the heated rivalry years of Terry Holland vs. Lefty Driesell, Ralph Sampson vs. Len Bias and Adrian Branch.
I remember her congratulating me after I won the school spelling bee in seventh grade by sharing that UVA had won its first-round ACC Tournament game. For some reason, the bee happened that Friday—a day I normally would’ve been home sick so I could watch the games.
The Dixons shaped countless lives, mine included. Back then, we never realized how much they and the other teachers sacrificed to be our guides. Now, years later, it’s clear how selflessly they gave—especially when it came to their own financial security.
For those of us whose lives are better because of their efforts, it’s time to give back.
It won’t repay the debt we owe them, but it’s a start.