Deceased December 11, 2022

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In Memory

Theodore Dixon Long, born June 26, 1933, died peacefully at home in Mill Valley, Calif., on Dec. 11, 2022.

Born in Warren, Ohio, Dixon graduated from Western Reserve Academy in nearby Hudson. He graduated from Amherst in 1955 and earned a master’s in economics from Tufts University and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

After service with the Army in Korea, Dixon and two college friends built a 42-foot yawl in Osaka, Japan, and sailed her across the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans to Barbados.

Dixon married his first wife, Ellen Corning, in 1962 and took a job with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He then became a tenured political science professor at Case Western University in Cleveland, eventually becoming dean. In 1985, he retired to write fiction and care for Ellen, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

After Ellen’s death, Dixon moved to San Anselmo, Calif., where he met and married Ruthanne Dickerson and continued to write, ultimately producing 10 novels. He and Ruthanne collaborated on Markets of Provence, about the markets in France’s Luberon region, followed by Markets of Paris, published after Ruthanne died of cancer in 2005.

Dixon helped found the East Branch Association to protect the Chagrin Valley, was president of the Ohio Conservation Foundation and served as a trustee for the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland. In California, he joined the board of the San Francisco Botanical Gardens at Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. Dixon also supported the Trust for Public Land, the Sierra Club and Trees for the Future.

He is survived by brothers Quincy and Jeffrey; son Sam; daughter Ali; grandchildren Boden, Sloane, Quincy and Zachary; stepdaughters Anne Dickerson Lind and Julie Dickerson Byrne; and step-grandchildren Oskar, Annabel, Ronan and John Max. 

Quincy Long