The flame still burns

After 30-plus passionate years of dousing fires and helping keep Clinton residents safe, Joe Dixon finally decided to extinguish the flame on his career at the Clinton Fire Department, opting now for a life of retirement.

The transition from full-time firefighter to retiree has admittedly been an adjustment.

“Well, it’s different, you know, not being able to get out and serve the public in that way anymore,” Dixon said on how it feels to retire. “How can I can put this, it’s like when you do something for so long then all of a sudden you’re out of it… it’s like leaving a part of your life behind. Being out in the community, and seeing that you’ve made a difference, or people still knowing you from working there and everybody still asking, how you doing or if you‘re still employed there. It’s just different and it takes adjustment getting use to retirement.”

Dixon has given much of his life to the fire department, and even after 3o years he wasn’t ready to give it up. Unfortunately, he said, he was pushed into the retirement decision after an unfavorable diagnosis from his doctor.

”I had to retire due to what I found out during one of my physicals I went to for the fire service,” he explained. “ My white blood count was higher than normal, and after being referred to other doctors, I was told I have leukemia. The doctor basically took me out; I didn’t want to leave. That makes a difference, too, when you don’t want to leave but you’re made to (leave). After serving so long, you feel like you’re letting the community down by leaving.”

While Dixon may feel he’s done an injustice to residents by retiring, there’s 30 years worth of service to the fire department that says otherwise. His career really spans closer to 34 years since he began his journey as a volunteer firefighter back in his high school days.

”I‘ve spent more than probably 34 years as a firefighter; I started volunteering whenever I was a junior at Union High Scho. That was in 1988 and I graduated in ‘89,” he remarked. “I got all my classes and stuff as I was volunteering with Garland Fire Department and then when an opportunity came up with the City of Clinton when they first started hiring full time I put in an application there and got hired as one of the first full-time firefighters.”

To dedicate over three decades to one career, there’s often time a driving factor that keeps a person in one place for so long. For Dixon, his reason for staying in the field stemmed from a deep love of helping people.

“I’ve always had the mentality of wanting to help people,” Dixon attested. “My daddy, Joe Dixon, Sr., he volunteered as a firefighter to start with, then I pursued it ,and even my brother, Lawrence Dixon, he pursued it behind me. He ended up, as we we’re volunteering, deciding one day he wanted to do law enforcement so I decided I’d go with him. We both graduated from BLET (Basic Law Enforcement Training) in ‘98 and he went with the Sheriff’s Office and I’ve been auxiliary with the Sheriff’s Office since then.

“So everything we’ve done with our lives has had something involved with helping people.”

When you’ve been a firefighter for as long as Dixon, the events witnessed, both good and bad, begins to add up, and quickly. Among the mountain of those he’s built up over that time he shared a few that were very vivid and even some of his fondest.

“Memories that stick out, are we talking good or bad because I meanI have so many,” he said. “I was around when Smithfield, and it might’ve still been called Lundy’s then, but I was there when it burnt the first time. I was at the Kaleel’s Grill fire downtown as well. I mean, I could go on and on about some of things I was there for. The take-away from all that for me, though, is that it was never just me going out. It was all of us, firefighters, and together we were actually able to save lives. So you can’t look back and say it was a waste of time because lives were touched and lives were saved.”

“I will say, though, that one of my standout memories of my career was that I actually got to be one of the flag bearers for the 9/11 Memorial. Being able to see it from a different perspective and to be a part of something that was as big as 9/11, that was one of the great moments.”

A life of suiting up and running into burning buildings is a thing of the past now as retirement lays before Dixon. As for how he noted that future looks like for him, he said his children are in still in college so his focus right now is being in full-on dad mode.

“Both of my kids are in college so I’ve still got to do the fatherly thing and the Godly thing and provide for my family,” he said. “I still have to figure out what I can do and I’ll probably still do something where I can be a part of helping the community right on, but right now, I‘m still in dad mode.”

“Other than that I just want to say thank you; I owe it all to my family throughout the years for having to do things without dad. I thank the church as well. I’ve served the church for a long time and I’m still serving. Anytime you’re into public service you’re not always home, you’ve got weird schedules but getting through it has a lot to do with your friends and family.

“It’s them being there for you when you need them and understanding what you’re doing and why you’re doing it for it to all workout.”