How Did it Begin?

It began in the summer of 1981 - on one of those humid summer days for which Washington, D.C. is so notorious. Ma was visiting Connie and me on the occasion of our forthcoming wedding at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in just a couple of days hence.

On this particular day, as she often inclined to do, Ma began ruminating about her parents and her numerous nieces and nephews. Both of her parents had died in Jamaica long before I was born. And I knew few of my cousins, except those I knew as a child in Boston, and a few who lived in Brooklyn. One question lewd to another. Who exactly were her brothers and sisters? Who stayed in Albert Town? Who left? Where did they go? Why? What about my cousins ... the children of her brothers and sisters? I studiously recorded Ma's answers on a day-old copy of the Washington Post.

Personal computers were nowhere near as popular as they are today and - hunting and pecking on an office typewriter - I carefully listed Ma's parents, brothers and sisters. I tried with limited to success to determine whether "cousin so-and-so" was really a cousin. (A few were, but most were not.)  Little did I know at the time that the orange that I was unpeeling would soon grow into a watermelon!

In the weeks that followed, I sent several letters to family members that I knew - Enid Baird and Joslyn Wright in Brooklyn, Winifred Howes and Noel Dixon in Boston, Janet "Janey" Pinto in Gordon Heights, NY, the late John Jackson in Los Angeles, to name just a few. Imagine my surprise when I began to receive their informative replies. At the time, I didn't take their suggestions for a family reunion seriously. 

A Lull.

I wish I could tell you that in the months that followed, I immersed myself into this project. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth! I returned to my to my full-time position in the U.S. House of Representatives and attended law school at Georgetown University in the evening. I had a very "full plate" and the Dixon family history gave way to such other pressing matters as Contracts, Evidence, Torts and other law school classes.. The papers and letters sent by my extended family members were unceremoniously stuffed into a file box.

But, in the years that followed, several events converged to return the family history to my "front burner." Ma was in town for my law school graduation and admission to the Maryland bar relieved me considerably. My dear Aunt Hilda had died, affirming our mortality. I was becoming computer literate and, while browsing in a computer store, I came across a fairly simple genealogy program. 

Re-energized.

As I painstakingly set about the business of entering the family information into the computer program (Family Tree Maker, version 1), gaps in our family began to leap out at me. I quickly realized that, if I was to make headway, I'd have to continually ask still other Dixon family members for more information. Ma was exceedingly helpful and supportive. So were others.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that I had entered over 200 hundred relatives into my data base!

I sporadically continued these efforts over the next few years. I know that more than a few family members found it hard to tolerate my persistent inquiries and to comprehend why I had undertaken this mammoth, never-ending task.

Albert Town and plans for the Dixon Family Reunion

In the winter of 1995, Connie and I impulsively decided to visit Jamaica for a week of sun and fun. By then I had identified well over 600 Dixon family members! Of course we traveled to Albert Town in Trelawny's Cockpit Country and met my cousin, Fay Clark, and her family, and visited St. Andrew's Anglican Church. I cannot describe the overpowering emotion I felt as we walked about the church cemetery and touched the graves of my maternal grandparents, Nethland and Avis Dixon, and many other Dixon family members. 

Returning to our hotel in Negril, Connie and I determined we had to share this moving experience. There had to be a Dixon Family Reunion. But when? Where? How? We sometimes found it difficult to make our own vacation plans! How does one go about arranging a family reunion? We had no idea of the enormity of the task. And so we naively decided that the only way to "make it happen" would be to arbitrarily declare a date and time certain, spread the word, and hope that maybe 20 or 30 family members might attend the first Dixon Family Reunion in July, 1996.

After a sluggish start, the responses to the idea of a Dixon family reunion were overwhelming!9

Over 200 individuals from Jamaica, Canada, England and 14 of the United States attended. The reunion in Negril  

     ...... to be continued.