Maggie Dixon’s funeral is being held today in North Hollywood, California. Where her family lives and she grew up. Then it will be returned to West Point for burial there.

The family of Army coach Maggie Dixon has accepted an offer to have Dixon buried at West Point.

The burial, an honor usually reserved for high-ranking officials, is scheduled for Friday.

Dixon, 28, died last Thursday night at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., after suffering a heart arrhythmia Wednesday. An autopsy conducted Friday found that Dixon had an enlarged heart and a problem with a heart valve, according to the Westchester County Medical Examiner’s office. The valve problem could have caused her heart to beat irregularly and ultimately stop.

A funeral service for Dixon will be Tuesday morning at St. Charles Church in North Hollywood, Calif., her hometown.

The Army and DePaul teams are in California and will attend Tuesday’s service. Dixon was an assistant at DePaul before taking over the Black Knights this past season. Players gathered at a dinner Monday night in North Hollywood to share stories about their coach.

If you haven’t taken a look, Keith uploaded the video of the celebration at the conclusion of the Patriot League championship game where the cadets charged the court and carried Maggie Dixon off the court. I never noticed how dusty my office is. Really hurts my allergies.

Here’s a column from the Denver Post.

You know anybody 28? It is supposed to be a time of growth, a time to have lived just long enough to begin to reflect, to look forward to that big number of 30, what it brings, what lies beyond.

“We met with her in Detroit for the interview,” [Army’s Athletic Director Kevin] Anderson said. “Early into it, we knew we were looking at our next coach. She did a wonderful job of getting her kids to believe in themselves. Every game, the team got better.

“We were together in Indianapolis recently for the Final Four. We went to a couple of parties. People gravitated to Maggie. They kept congratulating her on her first Army season. She just deflected the compliments to the players and the school; so humble. Maggie has family and then a large extended family. When we hired her, we hired the family. In that way, hiring her alone helped sell tickets.”

Anderson laughed after he said that. Sometimes laughter sounds sad. He was proud when he spoke of her mom and dad, Marge and Jim, and of her sister, Julie.

A NY Daily News Borough columnist offers his condolonces to old friends.

This one is for my friends Jim and Margie Dixon out of Throgs Neck in the Bronx, who in a single season have fallen from the heights of glory to the abyss of human despair.

Last month, Jim and Margie watched two of their terrific kids, a son named Jamie and a daughter named Maggie, lead teams into the NCAA tournament, the first time in history a brother and sister ever did that.
…
The single consoling thought I had after hearing the news was that Maggie Dixon had been raised by two of the best people you’d ever meet. She had champions for parents, truly good and decent and selfless people whose 41-year marriage was forged in the Irish working-class streets of “The Neck” and survived four decades in North Hollywood, where they raised their three kids in a modest home with a basketball hoop in the yard that became the brass ring of life for two of them.

Even with all the fake distractions of Hollywood around them, Margie working for Warner Bros. and Jim acting and writing for the movies, nothing was ever more important to these two Bronx kids than their family. Their children always came first. And so Maggie Dixon’s short, sweet and amazingly successful 28 years were probably jam-packed with more life, love and laughter than a full roster of other young women her age.

Everything else was gonna be gravy.

But goddamnit it all to hell, this kid was only getting started in what would have been an amazing life and career.

On a personal note, today is my little sister’s birthday. Happy birthday, Jen. I love you.

I’ll get to see her this weekend when I travel to the folks and she comes up from Houston. Right now, this weekend can’t come soon enough.