Trial lawyer who helped other legal professionals find sobriety
Starting in Bill Dixon’s office as a law clerk, Bill Goodrich quickly realized that one of his most important responsibilities came on Thursday evenings. In the conference room of his law office Downtown, Mr. Dixon held a weekly open meeting for lawyers, judges and others affected by substance abuse.
“Bill would schedule his entire calendar around that opportunity to meet with everyone,” said Mr. Goodrich, who was told to keep coffee flowing during the meeting and answer the office phone. “Everyone would have a chance to talk about the problems they were having and how to maintain sobriety.”
Mr. Dixon, a longtime Pittsburgh trial lawyer and co-founder of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, a statewide group that helps legal professionals with substance abuse and mental health issues, died Thursday. He was 90.
Known as the godfather of Pittsburgh’s sobriety community, Mr. Dixon became sober in 1962 and, in the following 57 years, helped many others do the same. “There are hundreds — if not thousands — of people, a lot of lawyers included, who credit Bill Dixon with saving their lives,” said longtime friend Michael Bartley.
Born and raised in Homewood, Mr. Dixon cherished his upbringing in what was then a predominantly Irish community. He grew up on Monticello Street, one of eight children of a Pittsburgh police officer who immigrated from Ireland.
In his later years, when he could no longer drive, he would ask Mr. Bartley to drive him around Homewood. He would get out of the car and tell stories to passersby — about walking to buy day-old bread to help feed his family, or about the trick that kids would use to take the streetcar to Central Catholic — repeatedly handing one transit pass out the window to a line of kids waiting to board, so that 10 kids could ride under one ticket.
Mr. Dixon graduated from Central Catholic in 1947 and became the first in his family to graduate from college four years later, with a degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1951 to 1955, returning to Pittsburgh to graduate from law school at Pitt in 1958.
He worked as an insurance claims adjuster and as a lawyer at a legal services office before starting his own firm with a classmate, Sanford Middleman. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that lawyers could advertise their services in 1977, Mr. Dixon was one of the first in Pittsburgh to take advantage, Mr. Goodrich said. “He was on the front page of the Yellow Pages on day one,” he said.
Mr. Goodrich is technically Mr. Dixon’s cousin once removed, but Mr. Dixon usually referred to him as his nephew. Not only did he hire Mr. Goodrich as a law clerk his final year of night law school at Duquesne, but he fed him lunch daily, too. After Mr. Goodrich graduated, he joined the firm, where Mr. Dixon would encourage him to take advantage of every professional development opportunity. When Mr. Goodrich lost a case and the firm couldn’t recover money, Mr. Dixon chalked it up to “tuition” to help him become a better lawyer.
Mr. Dixon had a big, booming voice — he was sometimes nicknamed “The Bear” but used a more quiet, self-effacing manner in the courtroom trying personal injury cases. “He had a way with juries,” said his wife, Kathleen Gavigan, of Oakland, who went to law school after they married in 1981 and eventually joined his law firm. “He looked them in the eye, and they liked him. Some way or another, he just knew them.”
At a certain point in his workday, Mr. Dixon would “start his calls” — a succession of 20 or more daily phone calls to check up on individuals who he was mentoring through substance abuse recovery.
“I think he looked at himself and realized he should be dead,” Mr. Goodrich said, “and that recognizing that he should be dead and that someone had taken the time and made the effort to save him and save his life — it was just pay it forward after that.”
In the late 1980s, he cofounded Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers with Philadelphia attorney John Carroll, who also was open about his sobriety. The organization offers confidential support to lawyers, judges and family members struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues.
In addition to his work mentoring individuals, he was a persuasive fundraiser, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for causes such as St. Paul of the Cross Monastery and The Rebos
House in Hazelwood.
A devout Catholic, Mr. Dixon also was committed to his two children and large extended family. He never missed a football game that his son, Dan, played in high school or college, and he was a constant presence in the lives of his children and their friends, recalled his son. He would hold poker games for his 21 nieces and nephews when they were children, said Ms. Gavigan, using silver dollars as chips.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son, Dan, of Hillsborough, N.J.; his daughter, Deborah, of Orlando, Fla.; and two grandchildren. The family will hold a visitation at McCabe Brothers funeral home in Shadyside on Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. and a funeral Mass at St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland on Monday at 10 a.m. The family requests that contributions be made to St. Paul’s Monastery or Central Catholic High School.