Meet Dr. Ken Dixon! Dr. Dixon, a longtime Gainesville resident, has over 35 years experience as a cancer surgeon and treating cancer patients. He is married to Connie and the couple has three children; Chris, Heather and Laura, and three grandchildren.
Dr. Dixon graduated with a B.S. from Davidson College, and an MD from Emory, and completed a residency in general surgery at Emory University Affiliated Hospitals, his surgical oncology fellowship was at MD Anderson. He currently treats patients at his community cancer practice in Gainesville; SpeciCare.
We want to thank Dr. Dixon for sitting down with us recently and telling us more about his life and love of Hall County.
Question: What inspired you or led you to your current career?
Answer: “I thought I might become a history professor. Heyward Gnann was a critical thinker who taught me in high school but then I decided to follow in my father’s (Dr. P.K. Dixon) footsteps.”
Q: What is your favorite restaurant in Hall County, and what do you love there?
A: “Poor Richard’s. I like their hot bacon dressing…and the quiet and pleasant way they treat people.”
Q: “How long have you lived or worked in Hall County?
A: “Since my parents moved here in 1954 when I was five, bringing Carol, me, Susan, and then following along with Brad, as a later life mistake.”
Q: Who is the most interesting person you’ve met here in Hall County?
A: “I would have to say that my father, P.K. Dixon, Jr. has to be that person. He never quit. He was always thinking about what is best for the patient. He had ‘moxie,’ too.”
Q: Who would you like to see nominated as a Face of Hall County?
A: “Hmm. My wife for putting up with me with my late in life changes in direction, upending the usual order of winding down a career, instead, ramping up a new one. Seriously, she is the partner of someone who is taking a risk has a really important role in supporting that risk taker, because it isn’t easy to go down that path later in life.”
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would it be? And why?
A: “I love England, the quiet parts, and wandering up on something I have heard about at one point or another. And meeting the people in the beds and breakfasts and learning what they are about. My family and I have been fortunate to have done this some in the past and have some really nice memories.”
Q: What is your favorite movie OR what is the first movie you remember seeing in a theater?
A: “‘High Noon,’ starring Gary Cooper. But the best part is the opening sequence (click here to watch) where Tex Ritter sings the song and the bad guys ride up to go in to town to kill Gary Cooper—but no one could ever do that.”
Q: What advice would you give a crowd of people?
A: “Seek good advice, then think for yourself.”
Q: What is something on your bucket list?
A: “I would like to see Zermatt and the Matterhorn (Switzerland) once again.”
Q: What is your favorite music/ three bands you would like to see (dead or alive)?
A: “First, Mark Knopfler.  Second, Linda Ronstadt. Third, either Bonnie Raitt or Emmy Lou Harris.”
Q: What current / former local business makes you the most nostalgic about Hall County?
A: “I miss Lanier Park Hospital.”
Q: Choosing anyone alive and a non-relative: with whom would you love to have lunch?
A: “Paul Berg of Stanford, who figured out how to create the combination of new organisms from pieces of others, but then waited for two years to do it, while the folks in the 1970s figured out if it was safe.”
Q: Where in Hall County would you have lunch?
A: “The Collegiate, or maybe at my office while we had fast food from somewhere around and talked.  (Breakfast would be Rabbittown Café.)”
Q: What is your favorite thing or something unique about Hall County?
A: “I like the people, in general. I like that we have something of every kind of people around now. I think that is, all in all, better than being the same.”
Q: “Where do you see yourself in five or 10 years?
A: “I hope above ground. I would like to help people with cancer find their best options to staying alive.”
Q: Even for friends or family, what is something interesting that most people don’t know about you?
A: “I read the obituaries in Science and Nature so I can learn about people who have done important things in Science. My brother Brad makes fun of me about that all the time. Other than that, there isn’t anything interesting or different about me, other than I am (and like being) a nerd.”
Q: What three words or phrases come to mind when you think of the word HOME?
A: “Feels like home, family. I guess it is just those two.”
The Faces of Hall County is a project to showcase the amazing people that live or work in our community. If you would like to nominate an interesting person to be featured please email babernathy@gonorton.com.