Former Swepsonville pastor killed in Haiti

The sermon that Rev. Jerry Martin gave to his Swepsonville United Methodist Church congregation on Sunday included thoughts of Haiti.

The earthquake and its aftermath are on a lot of people’s minds, but for the members of Martin’s church, especially those who attended in the early 1980s, this international tragedy is now also a personal one.

The Rev. Samuel Wesley Dixon Jr., who served as the pastor of Swepsonville United Methodist Church from 1980 to 1984, died last week before he could be rescued from the ruins of a hotel destroyed by the earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12. He was 60.

“It was a very difficult day at church (Sunday). Some people knew and some didn’t know,” said Martin, who has served as senior pastor of the Swepsonville church since 2004. “Everybody who knew him loved him.”

Martin thought it was important to focus this Sunday’s sermon around Dixon and his work with the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries. Dixon was serving as the executive officer of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, a disaster and rehabilitation agency related to Global Ministries.

“I just felt it was something the people at the church needed because they loved him so much,” Martin said.

Dixon, the Rev. Clint Rabb and the Rev. James Gulley, two others from the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, were actually at the Hotel Montana Tuesday to meet with people from other agencies in an effort to improve medical services in the country.

Rabb and Gulley were both rescued. Dixon’s wife, Cindy, received word that when Rabb was rescued, it was determined that her husband was still alive. She was driving to the airport with plans to fly to Miami, which is where he would have been transported eventually, when she received the news that when the rescuers returned to Dixon to pull him out of the rubble, he was dead.

Rabb was taken to a hospital in Miami where he later died of his injuries. Gulley was able to return to his home in Denver, according to a news release from the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries.

Nancy Shebester, longtime member of the Swepsonville United Methodist Church as well as a close friend and former next-door neighbor of the Dixons, visited with Cindy Dixon at their home in Roanoke Rapids on Saturday.

“She is doing remarkably well under the circumstance, but she is a basket case,” Shebester said. “They were so close.”

The couple, who have four grown children, were often apart.

“He traveled the world over going to these desperate situations,” Shebester said.

Martin is convinced that if Dixon wasn’t in Haiti during the earthquake, he would have made a point to go there after to help.

“I guarantee it,” Martin said.

Shebester was extremely close to Dixon while he was in Swepsonville and in the years since he left.

 “He was the most wonderful man you ever want to meet in your life,” Shebester said.

The Rev. Randy Innes, pastor of Millbrook United Methodist in North Raleigh, and his wife, Emily Innes, have known Dixon for 20 years. They received an e-mail on Saturday from missionaries in Thailand saddened by the news of Dixon’s death. Under Dixon’s leadership, a United Methodist church was started in Thailand.

The fact that Dixon died while trying to make services in an impoverished country better doesn’t necessarily make his death easier on the people who knew and cared about him, but they do know that he died doing the work he loved.

“He had a big heart,” Emily Innes said. “He really was a person who cared for the least, the last, the lost, as Jesus taught us. That was his life, his passion, his mission. He was a great servant of our church and Jesus Christ.”

There are many people mourning his loss.

“In many ways, Sam was the face of the United Methodist Church all over the world,” the Rev. Randy Innes said. “Sam’s death is a tremendous loss to the church. He was a good friend to us and to many, and we are really going to miss him.”

Shebester is saddened by the loss, but remains comforted by her faith.

“He was a wonderful guy, and I’m sure heaven is a better place today because he is there,” she said.

   Dixon grew up in North Carolina. He graduated from Statesville High and attended college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received a doctorate degree in ministry from the Chicago Theological Seminary.

He served as pastor at churches in Sneads Ferry, Durham, Swepsonville, Swansboro and Roanoke Rapids. In 1998, Dixon joined the staff of UMCOR and was named executive officer of the organization in 2007.

Donations can be made in Dixon’s name to the Haiti Relief Fund of UMCOR. Checks can be made payable to UMCOR with “advance No. 418325 Dixon Memorial” in the memo line. They can be mailed to UMCOR, P.O. Box 9068, New York, N.Y. 10087. Donations can be made online at umcorhaiti.org.