Kenneth L. Dixon

Who was Kenneth L. Dixon?

Kenneth Lee "Ken" Dixon, was a prominent journalist who reported, edited, and penned columns for seven newspapers, including two in Louisiana -- Lake Charles and Baton Rouge. He was a war correspondent during World War II.

Dixon was born in McDonough County, Illinois, near the small town of Colchester to Roy Lee Dixon and the former Martha R. Mourning. He was educated in public schools and then obtained a two-year professional teaching diploma from Western Illinois University in Macomb, also located in McDonough County. He taught in rural schools for a time but then launched a newspaper career that began with the Macomb Daily Journal, where he was a reporter from 1934-1936. He was thereafter a reporter for the Canton Daily Ledger in Canton, Illinois.

Between 1936 and 1942, he went west and was an editor for the Hobbs Daily News in Hobbs in Lea County in eastern New Mexico and the Carlsbad Current Argus in Carlsbad in Eddy County, New Mexico.

On July 1, 1938, he married the former Ola Maye Montgomery of Hobbs. They had no children.

Dixon joined the Associated Press in Washington, D.C., in 1942. He was a war correspondent in North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific theaters. His reporting in World War II won him Army, navy, and Army Air Corps commendations and a citation from Sigma Delta Chi, the professional journalism society. He accompanied more than twenty-five air combat missions and was the only newspaperman present when American forces broke out of Anzio and advanced on Rome. In December 1944, Dixon covered the successful exploits of then United States Army Mayor William Stewart Walker of Winnfield to rescue 380 American soldiers trapped behind Nazi lines in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium.