Betty McPhail Hixson

Betty was born on February 26, 1937, in Spring City, Tennessee, to Joseph and Elizabeth (Worley) McPhail. She was raised on the family farm along with her only sibling, Barbara. She attended Spring City High School where she was a popular cheerleader, received many awards, and was crowned FFA queen.

Betty married Leonard John Dodson, a Spring City High School football star, in 1955 and they had five children. They moved from Spring City to Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1956, and later started Dodson Construction Company where they both worked hard to keep the business afloat. Their marriage didn’t survive and she took on several jobs with five children to support. She worked in an accounting position at Provident Life Insurance in Chattanooga, and later at a different construction company as the office manager.

Betty married Kenneth (Kenny) C. Hixson in 1976. They moved to the Panama Canal Zone to take Civil Servant jobs. Betty worked as a Budget Analyst for the 103rd Infantry Brigade, U.S. Army, Canal Zone, and lived in Panama until the U.S. gave the canal to the Panamanians. Her time in the Panama Canal Zone proved to be one of her most memorable career moments during the negotiations of the Panama Treaty. She wrote, “It was a very exciting time as we worked alongside the senators that made numerous visits to meet with the General. I saw President and Mrs. Carter when they came to Panama to sign the treaty.”

After the Panama Canal Treaty was implemented, Betty and Kenny moved to Houston, Texas where she went to work in accounting for NASA, Johnson Space Center where once again she used her skills at balancing books. Betty later wrote about her time at NASA, “I worked for NASA when the first shuttle was launched. NASA was very gracious in letting the ordinary employee go into mission control to watch the tracking of Columbia and hear the conversations between mission control and the astronauts. I saw many prominent news anchors from all over the world, as multitudes would descend on Johnson Space Center each time a shuttle was launched.” After the failure of her marriage to Kenny, she transferred to the Naval Supply Center in Oakland, California in 1982, to be near her children that had moved to California where their father had lived.

When the Naval Supply Center was closed to cut back on the Defense Budget, she was transferred in 1998 to the Military Sealift Command Pacific in San Diego, California. She continued to work as a budget officer maintaining the budget and paying the bills for the Navy’s two hospital ships, the Mercy and the Comfort. She retired at the age of 70 and continued to live in Chula Vista, California until 2018 when, because of her dementia, her children moved her to Tracy, California to be near them. She lived at Astoria Senior Living and Memory Care in Tracy for almost four years until the time of her death.

Betty was preceded in death by her parents, Joe and Elizabeth McPhail, her youngest son, Dale Leslie Dodson, and her grandsons, Raymond Patrick Glynn and John Derek Dodson.

Survivors include her sister Barbara Ellis of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and four children, Karen E. Dodson-McAvoy (Douglas) of Tracy, California; Sharen L. Dodson of Napa, California; John W. Dodson of Martinez, California; Darryl W. Dodson (Heather) of Sonora, California; six grandchildren, Carlee Scanlon (Chris), Tiffany Dodson, John D. Dodson (Angela), Nicholas Dodson, Elliot D. McAvoy, and Tyler Pixley; and two great-grandchildren, Sloan and Annie Scanlon, and several nieces and nephews.

Betty’s chapel and graveside Christian services were held on July 2, 2022, at Lakewood Funeral Home and Memorial Park in Hughson, California. Serving as pallbearers were Johnny Dodson, Darryl Dodson, John Darryl Dodson, Nick Dodson, Doug McAvoy, and Elliot McAvoy.