FINE YOUNG LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 1, 2 January 1941, Page 8

FINE YOUNG LIFE

THE LATE MR. DIXON

KEEN INTEREST IN SPORT

A wide circle of young friends in Wellington will share with Mr. and Mrs. G. F. Dixon, of Kelburn, and the other members of their family, the great loss they have suffered by the death of their son and brother, Mr. James Yeomans Dixon. He was a young man who brought to his sporting and other interests great zeal and enthusiasm, and because of this, his general personality, and Ms association with sporting activities, he was popular and well known. His father is a veteran member of the Ministerial secretarial corps at Parliament House and is well known also for his keen interest in Victoria University College activities.

The late Mr. Dixon was the eldest son of a family of four (three boys

and a girl), and on February 3 next he would have been 28. He was edui cated at the Kelburn School, Welling- ' ton, and at Wellington College, and afterwards studied at Victoria College. He had a great fondness for literature. In addition, various branches, of sport claimed from him a healthy and enthusiastic interest. He was a good swimmer and when at Wellington College he developed a keen interest in athletics, this interest finding expres- : sion not only in active participation in walking events at one time and later in cross-country and track1 running but also to the extent that he was one of the six persons responsible for the foundation of the Victoria University College Harrier Club. As a boy of 13 he was first in the one mile walk handicap at Wellington College, and four years later, in 1930, competing from scratch in this event, he won the Sievwright Cup. In that year he gave a good taste of versatility by winning also, in addition to the walking cup, the senior long-distance running, by being second in the one mile handicap fiat, by being second in the 100 yards swimming championship, and by winning the Royal Life-saving Society's bronze medal. Dixon also gained some success in events at open athletic meetings, and after leaving school he showed promise as a golfer. He was a member of the Karori Golf Club. Mr. Dixon was also a promising member of I the St. Michael and All Angels Church Bible Class, Kelburn.

For seven years Mr. Dixon was a member of the staff of the National Mutual Life Association, Wellington. He left the company to become a radio announcer at Dunedin. When one of his mates left to go abroad, his own thoughts in this direction were stirred. A month or two later the chance of fulfilling this desire came to him unexpectedly, and he took it. He left New Zealand in March, 1939, to work his passage Home in a freighter. Soon after his arrival in England, Mr. Dixon found work with the Ministry of Labour Juvenile Transference Scheme, which was an endeavour to build up new careers for children from the distressed areas. When war broke out the scheme was curtailed as an economy measure. Mr. Dixon was looking after parties of children at health camps at Skegness and later in Derbyshire, and then he was offered a trjp to Australia, helping to super-

vise a party of 500 refugee children. From Sydney he came to New Zealand to see his people. At the time of his death he was on his way back to England, together with other escorts who came out with the refugee children, to undertake whatever' other war work might await him.