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The Spike [or Victoria University College Review 1954]

George F. Dixon

George F. Dixon

Outside the library is a brass plate recently unveiled. It is there to commemorate the services of George Dixon to Victoria University College. Perhaps already to many students he is no more than a brass plate, perhaps before long he will be no more than that to the crowds jostling on the stairs and in the corridors. Why then a memorial in cold bronze?

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It is there as a mark of the appreciation that those who knew him at Victoria University College over fifty years felt for him. At Victoria, as doubtless elsewhere, there is a tradition of unselfish service in the fabric of college life. Many will tell you that Victoria is a night school with no corporate life of any significance. Those who really know its ugly architecture and poor facilities understand it has a strong spirit of its own—a twilit one perhaps—but there.

Its very existence and particularly its element of service result from the efforts of many—but no man gave so much to achieve it as George Dixon. As a student he lead, after those days for fifty years he did all he could to help and advise. It would seem a proper judgment to say that he was the College's leading servant for its first fifty years. He never took a degree, he held no paid position to stimulate his interest, but he stayed true to the College for all that time.

To students of different periods he meant different specific things perhaps. To his contemporaries he was a capable student administrator, an active sportsman and a Founder of Tournament. Later he was the one who gave so much drive to the Jubilees, to various memorials and to the Student Union ideal. All this time he was a constant support to the sports clubs of his interest, and, in recent years he went out to collect money for the Building Public Appeal.

As students passed through the College he remained a constant help and adviser, and perhaps an inspiration. He was the very personification of the Victoria spirit I have mentioned. His of course was no superhuman perfection. His long service had brought him to many firm opinions. About them he could be as stubborn as Wellington in the face of a southerly. We, later and younger, might be irritated by this at times, but we could not deny his right to speak in strong terms on subjects which had been important to him when some of us were learning the alphabet.

His best memorial will be the infusion of his spirit into the students of the future so that Victoria will always have the most precious element of student life and graduate loyalty—service to the College which develops them to the maturity of their powers.

K. B. O'Brien