Billy and Olive Dixon - Bill O'Neal

. .

Résumé :
Billy Dixon triggered the most celebrated shot in the history of the West at the Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874. A few months later, while serving as an army scout, Billy earned a Medal of Honor during an even more desperate engagement, as one of six men battling for their lives against a band of 125 warriors at the Buffalo Wallow Fight. Both of these actions took place in the Texas Panhandle, where Dixon became an icon of heroism. Billy ran away to the West during boyhood, eagerly seeking adventure on the frontier. He worked as a woodchopper, a trapper, a bullwhacker and a muleskinner. Dixon became a buffalo hunter, displaying exceptional skills as a sharpshooter. After almost a decade as an army scout, Dixon returned to Adobe Walls to establish a bachelor home on the sparsely-settled plains. A fellow adventure-seeker, Olive King, came to the Panhandle from back East to visit her cowboy brothers. She became a frontier schoolmarm and she met her famous neighbor, Billy Dixon. Billy and Olive fell in love, married, and had eight children. Olive persuaded Billy to dictate his memoirs to her, and the result was a classic frontier biography, Life of Billy Dixon: Plainsman, Scout and Pioneer. During a long widowhood Olive Dixon became a major force in Panhandle history, helping to establish the Panhandle-Plains Museum, writing and speaking about her own pioneer experiences as well as Billy's, and erecting impressive monuments at Adobe Walls and at Buffalo Wallow.

Biographie:
Bill O'Neal was appointed State Historian of Texas by Governor Rick Perry, and during his six-year tenure he traveled tens of thousands of miles across the Lone Star State as an ambassador for Texas history. He is a past president and fellow of both the East Texas Historical Association and the West Texas Historical Association, and he has been a member of the Texas State Historical Association for over half a century. Bill is the author of more than fifty books. He was awarded the A.C. Greene Literary Award at the 2015 West Texas Book Festival in Abilene. In 2012 Bill received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Wild West Historical Association, and in 2007 he was named True West Magazine's Best Living Non-Fiction Writer. His account of Wyoming's Johnson County War won a book of the year award.Bill has appeared on TV documentaries on TBS, The History Channel, The Learning Channel, CMT, A&E, and the American Heroes Channel. During a long career at Panola College in Carthage, Texas, his most prestigious teaching award was a Piper Professorship, presented in 2000.In 2013 Panola's new dormitory was named Bill O'Neal Hall, and in that same year he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from his alma mater, Texas A&M University-Commerce. Bill's four daughters all have entered the field of education, and he is the proud grandfather of seven grandchildren.