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Joyce Martin Dixon is an American businesswoman and philanthropist.
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Joyce Martin Dixon is an American businesswoman and philanthropist.
Joyce Martin was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she lived with her family as a child on McConnell Road. [1] She graduated from James B. Dudley High School in 1952, [2] and Bennett College in 1956. [3] Her mother and both her sisters had also attended Bennett College. [4]
After leaving college, Martin moved to Florida. [1] Alongside her husband Jacob Dixon, an electrical engineer who had worked on the NASA space shuttle program, she was co-founder and co-owner of Creative Management Technology, Inc., a contracting firm based in Cocoa Beach, Florida, [4] which provided services to government agencies, especially NASA, for many years, [1] [2] and grew to employ 550 people. [5] The couple sold the company shortly before Jacob Dixon's death in 2004. [1]
Martin Dixon moved back to Greensboro in 2006. [1] In 2011 she donated $1 million to her alma mater, Bennett College, to pay for the Martin Dixon Intergenerational Center, a laboratory preschool used by elementary education majors and other academics researching young children and early years education, [1] built on the exact site where her father had run a barber shop in the 1940s. [5] This donation was the largest alumna donation in the college's history, [4] and Martin Dixon has continued to fund additional improvements and other projects related to the center, including a 14-seat schoolbus in 2015. [4] She received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bennett College for her philanthropy, [2] [5] as well as a "Woman of Substance" award. [5] Dixon has served as chair of the Brevard Community College Board of Trustees, Vice Chair of the Astronauts Memorial Foundation Board, Director of the Southern Area Links, Inc. and President of the Cocoa Beach Women’s Golf Association. [2] She currently serves on Hayes Taylor Memorial YMCA Board of Management. [2] She was awarded the United Negro College Fund's "Outstanding Alumna" award, and was named as Brevard County's "Woman of Distinction". [5]
Joyce Martin married Jacob Dixon, her childhood sweetheart, and they had two children. Her daughter Janice Gail died in 1961, aged five, of purpura, a form of leukemia. [1] Martin Dixon set up an organ and tissue donation awareness program in her memory named Linkages to Life. [4] Her son Jacob, a pilot in the US Air Force died in July 1982 in a plane crash in Wichita Falls, Texas, aged 27, [1] and his parents established a scholarship fund at the school where he graduated in Wiesbaden, Germany. [4] Jacob Dixon Snr. died aged 73 in 2004. [1]
Brevard County is located in the east central portion of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020, the population was 606,392, making it the 10th most populated county in Florida. The official county seat has been located in Titusville since 1894. Brevard County comprises the Palm Bay–Melbourne–Titusville, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is located along the east Florida coast and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean.
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Alma Shealey Adams is an American politician who represents North Carolina's 12th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. A Democrat, Adams represented the state's 58th House district in Guilford County in the North Carolina General Assembly from her appointment in April 1994 until her election to Congress, succeeded by Ralph C. Johnson. A college administrator and art professor from Greensboro, Adams is known for her many distinctive hats. She won the 2014 special election in North Carolina's 12th congressional district to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Mel Watt, becoming the 100th woman serving in the 113th Congress. She won election to a full two-year term at the same time.
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University is a public, historically black land-grant research university in Greensboro, North Carolina. It is a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina System. Founded by the North Carolina General Assembly on March 9, 1891, as the Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race, it is the second college established under the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1890, and the first for people of color in the state of North Carolina. Initially, the college offered instruction in agriculture, English, horticulture, and mathematics. In 1967, the college was designated a Regional University by the North Carolina General Assembly and renamed North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
Bennett College is a private historically black liberal arts college for women in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was founded in 1873 as a normal school to educate freedmen and train both men and women as teachers. Originally coed, in 1926 it became a four-year women's college. It is one of two historically black colleges that enroll only women, the other being Spelman College.
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The Brevard County Library System is a public library system in Brevard County, Florida that coordinates activities between its member public libraries, which collectively serve Brevard County. It is composed of 17 distinct branches stemming all the way from Mims to Micco, with the central administrative and largest of these libraries being the Catherine Schweinsberg Rood Central Library in Cocoa, Florida. It is governed by a board of trustees appointed and funded by the Brevard County Board of Commissioners. Its missions statement is "Brevard County Libraries enables people of all ages to improve their quality of life by providing information and enrichment through traditional resources and new technology." Its vision statement is "We will be recognized as a Library System that excels in providing efficient, modern, accessible and customer oriented services."
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