Skyline

The Dixie-Sherman Hotel was the Panama City skyline. It was downtown at the corner of Jenks and 5th Street, across from Lloyd Pontiac-Cadillac and catty-cornered across from the post office. Lots of townsfolk can look back and recall associations with the Dixie-Sherman. Impressions are one’s reality, and my memory is of an elegant lobby, a mezzanine, and riding the elevator up to the ballroom where Kiwanis Club met for lunch every week, and Rotary Club.

Our Key Club at Bay High was supposed to send a rep to Kiwanis luncheon every week and to my joy nobody was ever interested in going but me: hike down to the Dixie-Sherman, have a delicious meal that always included my first ever Parker House roll and a pat of real butter, enjoy being with town leaders, hike back to school. We also had balls there sometimes, Christmas Ball, Prom. 

My last time in the Dixie-Sherman was December 1957. We were home for Christmas leave and Linda’s father, Urban Peters, took me to Rotary as his guest -- newly-commissioned, Ensign Tom Weller, US Navy, in uniform. Had to wear the uniform of course, having just been commissioned the prior week. Not too dazzling, as there’re not a lot of medals and ribbons on the chest of 22-year-old new ensign. 

A decade or so into our Navy years, my parents wrote us that they had walked down to the bay in front of the house here to watch as the Dixie-Sherman was imploded and collapsed in a cloud of dust.

TW+