Dixon-Rabb Hall named in honor of 2 relief workers

A facility that has provided relief and support to the St. Mary Parish community for almost 150 years dedicated a new building Tuesday and they named it after two men who lost their lives trying to help the less fortunate.
The new Dixon-Rabb Hall will expand the ability of UMCOR Sager Brown in Baldwin to house and provide for volunteers by almost 30 percent. The facility was named after Rev. Samuel Williams Dixon Jr. and Rev. Clinton Clark Rabb who lost their lives during the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
The men were on a charitable mission in the impoverished country when the building they were in collapsed during the quake. The Haitian government put the death toll from the Jan. 12 catastrophe anywhere from 220,000 to 316,000. Over 200,000 residences and 30,000 businesses were destroyed.
At the time, Dixon was the Deputy General Secretary of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). Rabb was the Executive General Secretary of Mission Volunteers at the General Board of Global Ministries and was there as a colleague to help Dixon.
The new Dixon-Rabb dormitory at Sager Brown in Baldwin will house approximately 30 additional beds at the campus in Baldwin. Ted Warnock, Interim Director of Disaster Relief Supplies, who worked closely with Dixon said the new building would drastically expand the capabilities of Sager Brown and UMCOR.
“This will allow us to house and provide care for 30 new volunteers a week,” Warnock said. “Having this additional capacity will allow us to work more with our youth and volunteer teams. It will also provide greater comfort by having less people in our rooms.”
Warnock also said he had the privilege of working hand in hand with one of the men the building is named after. He said the building was aptly named for two men who gave their lives for a worthy cause.
“Sam (Dixon) was a person who allowed people to be their best but he would be quite embarrassed to know his name was on the outside of this building,” Warnock said. “Sam’s style of leadership was to ask, ‘what do you need and I’ll help you get it.’ Hopefully people who sleep in that building will reflect upon what he stood for. That is my ultimate hope. That people, who may not ever know the name that is on the building, will contemplate what it means to know what we are about.”
Sager Brown was established in 1867 as a facility to educate and house African-American children. Since its inception, the facility has grown to include multiple buildings and other resources.
While the school closed in 1978, the facility remained to provide for the needs of the community. The importance of Sager Brown to the surrounding community came into stark relief during Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
When the storm devastated St. Mary Parish, the doors of the old brick buildings that had withstood the force of the storm were opened and it was used as a disaster relief center.
Today, the campus, their old dorms and the new Dixon-Rabb building are used to house and educate nearly 3,000 volunteers every year. People from all across the country come to Sager Brown to volunteer locally with Chez Hope, local schools or with other local projects.