Well known berry farmer Bob Dix dies at age 84
Troutdale man was ‘everybody’s first boss’
Contributed photo
Bob Dix with his children Robin and Julie circa late 1950s.
Troutdale berry farmer Bob Dix, who is remembered by scores of children who worked and grew up in his berry fields, died Friday, Aug. 21, at his Boring home of esophageal cancer. He was 84.
His funeral service will be at 1 p.m. Friday, Aug. 28, at Smith Memorial Presbyterian Church, 2420 Fairview Ave., where he and his wife, Louise, were members of the Mariners. Viewing is from noon to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 26, at Gresham Memorial Chapel, 257 S.E. Roberts Ave.
“Bob Dix was everybody’s first boss,” remembered Mary Bryson of Springdale, who worked in the Dix berry fields when she was growing up.
Neil Handy of Troutdale, who recently turned 62 and collected his first Social Security check, started working for Dix as a fifth-grader. Handy and his brothers worked weekends after school, then summers picking and in late day helped Dix load crates to take to the cannery.
It was how you learned your work ethic, Handy said.
“You were a kid and you had your own money and you learned to save some.”
Nancy Callister Buley, who now works for J. Frank Schmidt & Son nursery, worked in the Dix fields and was a friend of their daughter, Julie.
“He was always pretty calm but there was a special signal that let us know how things were going,” Buley remembers. “Bob always had some quarters in his pocket, and if they were really clinking together loud, we knew that he was worried about something (the rain, or sunscald on the raspberries, or the price of berries at the cannery, or a broken down truck). The louder the jingling change, the more we knew we’d better pay attention to our work and be model berry pickers.”
And at the end of the season, the Dixes took their workers on a blowout party at Blue Lake Park where “we all went crazy,” Handy remembered. “He knew how to work hard, but when it was time to have fun, he knew how to do that, too.”
Dix, smiling and soft-spoken, was a child of the Depression. Born Nov. 3, 1924, in Blunt, S.D., to William “Ben” and Luella (Snell) Dix, the family came west seeking a healthier climate for his mother, who had asthma.
They loaded a 1929 Buick with all their possessions, headed for “nice and cool” Oregon, but to do so, they had to drive the Columbia River Highway through the gorge.
“Unbelievable,” he remembered in an interview. “The road was enough to scare us to death.”
The family spent its first winter living in a shed in Mill City, still relishing the mild weather, which Dix said, “For us it was like going to Palm Springs.”
They settled in Troutdale when Ben Dix went to work for the Bissinger Wool Pullery. His mother became secretary of the Troutdale School Board.
Dix attended Troutdale Grade School and graduated from Gresham High School in 1942. There he met Ella Louise Wall, whom he married Oct. 2, 1943, in Pocatello, Idaho.
He attended Pacific University on a baseball scholarship in 1942-43 and entered the Navy in 1943. He served on a weather ship, the USS San Bernardino, at Midway and the Aleutian Islands. He was a quartermaster 3rd class and was discharged in 1945.
Dix first got a taste for the berry business while tending his father’s five acres. In about 1948, he and his wife moved into a rented home in Troutdale, surviving the winter of 1949-50 when everyone was snowed in for more than a week. They purchased about 40 acres at the top of the hill in Troutdale, the present location of the Strawberry Meadows subdivision.
“Every field I used to work in is all houses now,” Handy said.
But in the late 1940s when they first purchased their farm, no one even considered homes on the site. Louise Dix remembered, “We had to make a payment of $500 a year on that land, and how we struggled sometimes to get it paid.”
Dix frequently choked up when he remembered the years that his wife put a baby in the carriage and went out to the field to work beside him.
Tragedy twice struck their family. Encouraged that their son, Robin, wanted to continue the farm, Dix named the operation Bob Dix & Son Berry Farm, but Robin was killed in a car accident in 1982. In 1995 their daughter, Julie Dix Bybee, and her young son died in a car-train collision in Idaho.
In response to those tragedies, when they sold the Troutdale farm for development, the Dixes helped preserve the canyon and historic trail behind their fields. In honor of their children the trail is called Robins Way.
The Dixes retired in 1987 and moved to Boring. He was a charter member of the Troutdale Lions Club, served for a time on the Troutdale City Council and was a board member of the Gresham Berry Growers Association. He and his wife were members of the Mariners group at Smith Memorial Presbyterian Church.
He was a lifetime member of the Troutdale Historical Society and donated strawberries for that organization’s early ice cream socials.
He liked dancing with his wife, and they enjoyed traveling the United States towing their trailer. They visited many different countries as well. He enjoyed hunting, fishing and golf and two beach homes at Cape Meares and on the Puget Sound. He and his wife were faithful fans at their grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s sporting events.
He is survived by his wife of Boring; daughter, Kathy Louise Dix Green of Troutdale; foster brother, Bob Grockett of Gresham; as well as 10 grandchildren and six, soon to be seven, great-grandchildren.
Son Robin Jeffry Dix and Julie Dix Bybee, and grandson, Tyler John Bybee, preceded him in death as well as his foster brother, Wayne Cottingdon.
Memorial contributions are suggested to Smith Memorial Presbyterian Church or Mt. Hood Hospice, P.O. Box 1269, Sandy, 97055.
Gresham Memorial Chapel is handling arrangements.