Maggie Dixon was laid to rest at West Point Cemetary.
Dixon only spent a half year of her life at West Point, and still the guardians of American power and might decided she should rest right next to Glenn Davis and Red Blaik, the Heisman winner and the legend who taught Vince Lombardi how to coach.
It was 12:25 p.m. when all family members and generals and cadets had cleared from the cemetery, when the trucks rolled up to the coffin and a grim circle of men started breaking the tribute down. The chairs and tarps were folded up, the canopy was removed. The wreaths and roses were placed to the side, and the casket was lowered into the earth, taking away a Catholic girl in the Good Friday rain.
“What Maggie Dixon accomplished here in six and a half months,” said Patrick Finnegan, Brigadier General and West Point Dean, “some people won’t accomplish in a lifetime.”
They’ll never look at women the same way here; that’s what Maggie’s brother, Jamie, said as he stood near the empty silver and black hearse from the William F. Hogan Funeral Home. Jamie is the big-time men’s coach at the University of Pittsburgh. He knows people who didn’t even realize women attended West Point.
They realize it now. They saw the clips of Dixon leading her Army team to the Patriot League championship, leading the academy on its first trip to the NCAA Tournament. They saw the clips of Army football players in fatigues storming the court as if they were taking a hill behind enemy lines, and throwing Dixon onto their shoulders for the kind of ride Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewski never got at West Point.
“I took Maggie to a basketball camp when she was 12,” Jamie said, “and told her it was half boys, half girls. But she ended up being the only girl there. I asked her if she wanted to go home, and she didn’t want to hear it. She became the star of that camp.”
Read the whole article. It’s a great piece. Just too much to excerpt.
It is likely, though, that her name will not be forgotten.
“She’s done more in a month than some people do in a lifetime,” said Jamie Dixon said. “We’re hearing from so many people who want to do things. We got a call from people who want to have a women’s tournament in her name in Madison Square Garden.”
The women’s wing of the United States Basketball Writers Association is expected to announce in a few weeks the naming of an annual award in Dixon’s name. The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association is considering a similar honor.
