MILLSTONE — Prominent local horseman Dempsey Dixon, 89, died June 6.
That same weekend, he and his partner Helene Dunn served as honorary chairpersons of the Garden State Combined Driving event at the Horse Park of New Jersey in neighboring Upper Freehold. However, they could not attend the event.
The couple helped initiate the combined driving event show 18 years ago. They also started the Turkey Trot, held each November, at their Bull Run Farm before the event moved to the horse park when attendance grew.
The pair won carriage-driving championships at top shows, such as Devon in Pennsylvania and Gladstone in New Jersey. Dixon’s driving skills and horse-handling abilities got him a job as an extra in Oprah Winfrey’s film “Beloved.”
Dixon was also widely known for featuring prominently in the documentary “A Place Out of Time,” about the Bordentown Manual Training and Industrial School (BMTIS). The only state-supported, elite co-ed, all-black boarding school north of the Mason-Dixon Line, BMTIS operated from 1886 to 1955. Dixon kept voluminous scrapbooks that contain a great deal of information about his alma mater.
He graduated from BMTIS in 1940, earning a degree in agriculture and specialized in dairying. Dixon then attended Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, N.C., for two years, but left college when his father became ill. World War II had started and he joined the Navy.
In an interview last year, Dixon recalled entering the segregated armed forces in World War II, when Navy recruits were asked if they had any military training. He was one of the few black men who did, thanks to his days at BMTIS. Although Dixon became a chief petty officer, white soldiers harassed him when he went home on leave. He said they pulled him off a train on three separate occasions and gave him a hard time until they saw his stripes.
Dixon, named after heavyweight world champion boxer Jack Dempsey, once said his Baptist minister didn’t give him a choice about attending BMTIS.
“He said if I didn’t go to Bordentown, I could go to Jamesburg,” Dixon said, referring to the boys reform school.
Dixon would later spend years at the Jamesburg State Home for Boys, working as a shift commander and corrections officer.
After his retirement, Dixon pursued his dream of becoming a gentleman farmer, raising Black Angus cattle and Percheron horses at Bull Run Farm. Dixon happened upon Millstone Township when searching for a boy who ran away from the facility in Jamesburg. While driving through Perrineville trying to locate the runaway, Dixon stopped and asked a man by a mailbox about farms for sale in the area. The man told Dixon that the farm in front of him was on the market, and Dixon purchased the 70- acre property in 1959. Dixon believed that he may have been the only black farmer in the state at the time.
Chet Halka, owner of Halka Nurseries in Millstone, met Dixon at the age of 14. Halka was friends with Dixon’s son, Michael, who was killed by a drunken driver just three months after getting married.
Halka, who also drives horses, recalled having traded a tree for one of Dixon’s Black Angus bulls. Halka found out about Dixon’s passing when he went to deliver a DVD of the combined driving event highlights. Dunn told Halka that Dixon had passed that day. Halka recalled Dixon as a man who would help anyone and do anything for friends. Halka also said that Dixon “really supported sports for kids.”
During the 1970s and 1980s, Dixon volunteered as a track coach at Hightstown High School, Hightstown. He loved his runners and fought hard to gain support of the girls team and respect from the school and community.
Born in Madison to the late Rev. Edward Parker Dixon Jr. and Nora Ghee Dixon, he was raised in Jersey City. In 1944, he married the former Jeanne Still of Jersey City. She predeceased him, as did his son Michael O. Dixon. Besides Dunn, he is survived by his daughter, Michaele Dixon Bishop of Delaware; grandchildren, Sean and Jeanne Bishop; great-grandchild, Madison Deffenbaugh; and stepdaughter, Karen Dunn.
Donations in his memory can be made to the Dempsey Dixon Athletic Scholarship fund at Hightstown High School, Hightstown.