STILL A SURVIVOR
Foreman’s Helen Dixon loses home to fire
Helen Dixon continues to evolve as a survivor.
The 92-year-old woman, already known in Foreman, Ark., as a pioneer in race relations and a community “grandma,” helps her babies as a foster grandparent and a kindergarten aide.
Then, on Easter Sunday at about 1 a.m., she survived a house fire.
The 58-year-old house, near the Oscar Hamilton Elementary School in northwest Foreman, received extensive damage, but Dixon escaped unharmed.
The house was full of family memories.
The fire burned her bedroom, spread to the living room and stopped at the dining room.
“She is homesick and misses the house,” said one of her sons, Michael Dixon.
“I need to go home, but there is no home,” Helen Dixon said.
Foreman firefighters said the fire started from an extension cord in Dixon’s bedroom.
“I was in bed sleeping good about midnight (Easter morning), and all at once I heard a boom,” Dixon said.
“I have a king-size bed and looked at the foot of the bed and saw a little smoke,” she said.
She got up and saw that smoke
and flames were forming quickly. Dixon went to her bathroom, ran water from the sink and attempted to extinguish the fire by throwing water on it. The flames grew and the heat intensified, so she went outside.
Dixon grabbed a water hose, hooked it to the hydrant outside and tried again to extinguish the fire.
She went to her son Michael’s cabin to let him know her house was on fire. The cabin is near her backyard. They called 911, and the fire department arrived to put the fire out.
Dixon and her family are trying to determine where she can live and remain independent. She can’t afford an assisted-living facility, but the family is asking for help and may try to buy a small mobile home and furniture.
One of her favorite roles is being “grandma” to the children
at Foreman Head Start. She has also been a foster grandparent at the school.
Despite the fire, “grandma” has a lot of reasons to survive—her family and the community family.
In 1978, she became the first black woman elected to Foreman City Council. She has served on the council ever since and is its longest-serving member.
She is also the first black woman to serve in the Arkansas-Louisiana District of Kiwanis Club.
Dixon has served on the advisory board of Ash Grove Cement and has volunteered at the senior citizens center in Foreman.
In the late 1960s, Dixon and her husband, the late Ulysses Dixon, made the decision to let their children be the first black students to attend the all-white Foreman schools.
The schools at Foreman were better. The textbooks were newer. The Dixon family wanted the best for their children.
Besides raising her own nine children, Dixon worked for a family with five children, whom she cared for as if they were her own. She still keeps in touch with the children.
“I raised nine black children and five white children,” Dixon said.
The Dixon story is included in the book “Learning Together At Last: Memories of the Desegregation of the Arkansas Public School System.” The book was compiled and edited by Paul Root and published by the Pete Parks Center for Regional Studies at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark.
The Dixon story started in a time when “the common way to live was to be separated by skin color, people decided the common way would have to change, that everyone would have to coexist in an acceptable and equal fashion,” Root said.
“For integration to begin, a family had to be willing to place their child or children in the new environment, the school so many want to keep ‘pure’ and ‘unmixed,’” Root said.
Dixon continues to evolve as a grandma and historian of desegregation. The common core of being a survivor is having trust, she said.
“I trust the Lord. It’s the Lord’s business, and everything happens for a reason.”