Wearing an old-fashioned sports coat, thin tie and thick glasses, it’s hard to believe that Dixon Gayer was considered one cool guy at Cal State Long Beach.
“He was a real friend, a good professor … I think everyone on the [49er newspaper] staff was very fond of Dixon Gayer,” said Lee Brown, CSULB journalism professor and former student of Gayer. “Above all, he really knew what he was talking about.”
Gayer received his master’s degree in 1958 from what was then known as Long Beach State College. He began teaching journalism at CSULB the next year, joining a staff of two other professors. He retired in 1980.
Part of the respect Gayer received from students was due to being the nationaly renown founder of the Webster Quimmley Society, a political organization that sought to combat extremism on both sides.
The Associated Press eventually ran a story on the organization, catapulting Gayer into the national spotlight.
“You could read about him in TIME and Newsweek [magazines] … He was a big deal,” Brown said.
Gayer lost a lengthy battle with colon cancer on May 14, according to the LA Times. He was 92.
Photos of Gayer in CSULB’s Prospector yearbooks show a man heavily involved in student activities. He was listed as the Daily 49er’s faculty adviser in the 1962 and 1963 editions of the yearbook, as well as the adviser for the campus Press Club.
Like his political organization, Gayer rocked the boat when it came to the university journalism program, which was part of the English department and had its newspaper published by Associated Students.
Brown said that when he ran for editor of the 49er newspaper he wanted to stop dedicating a page to Greek organizations. However, Associated Students at the time told Brown they would stop funding the newspaper if that happened.
Gayer helped end those types of situations.
“He fought to help establish a [journalism] department that could set up its own board of publication and have editors that were not beholden to the Associated Students,” Brown said. “He wanted a separation of the press from the government.”
CSULB now has an independent journalism department and the student government is no longer the publisher of the newspaper.
Brown said, “Dixon genuinely liked his students, [and] he genuinely believed in good journalism.”
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