{"id":5034,"date":"2018-02-20T21:57:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T21:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arielsheen.com\/?p=5034"},"modified":"2019-04-03T18:27:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T18:27:07","slug":"msd-shooting-and-the-loss-of-a-great-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/20\/msd-shooting-and-the-loss-of-a-great-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"MSD Shooting and the Loss of a Great Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I’ve had a lot of thoughts after learning about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.<\/p>\n

When I taught at South Broward, Chris Hixon was a teacher there.<\/p>\n

For three years I went to that school once a month for weekend debate tournaments with my team.<\/p>\n

We had very different styles, but he was always helpful to me in getting the students involved in sports teams more motivated than they would be on their own accord. For a starting teacher, this is a huge deal.<\/p>\n

Hearing of what he did before he was shot didn’t suprise me at all. I’m sharing the below as a poor iteration of a memorial for someone I didn’t know all that well personally, but through our interactions always impressed me as a person of great character.<\/p>\n

Athletic Director Chris Hixon tried to disarm shooter to save the students he loved<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

BY LINDA ROBERTSON<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

February 20, 2018 06:44 PM<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

Chris Hixon, the athletic director and wrestling coach at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, was so dedicated to his students that when coaching vacancies forced him to consider discontinuation of various sports, he stepped to the sideline and coached them himself. At different times, he coached five sports at the school, for zero supplemental pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did it for free because he wasn\u2019t eligible for extra pay,\u201d said Jeff Morford, an assistant principal. \u201cCross country, volleyball, wrestling, basketball and track and field. He was there until 9 p.m. most nights. He was all about the kids. He would do anything for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

So no one was surprised to hear the accounts of Hixon speeding in a golf cart toward the sound of gunfire Wednesday when a former student walked into the school at dismissal time with an AR-15 rifle and began shooting people in the freshman building. Hixon\u2019s immediate reaction was to protect the students and stop the attack. Hixon was one of 17 victims at the Parkland school gunned down by the 19-year-old shooter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe heard he tried to disarm the shooter,\u201d said Dan Jacob, athletic director and wrestling coach at Coral Springs High and a friend of Hixon\u2019s for 20 years. \u201cHe always put others ahead of himself. He was the first to help people out. He just loved teaching and coaching kids and watching them grow up. Many tears have been shed; that\u2019s what he meant to everybody. I\u2019m going to try to be more like Chris.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hixon, 49, was to be feted at a surprise birthday party next week. He is survived by wife Debbie, the magnet program coordinator at South Broward High, and two sons. Tommy is in the U.S. Marine Corps and Corey is a special-needs young man who was a regular with his father at Eagles sporting events.<\/p>\n

Hixon, who grew up as a wrestler in Easton, Pa., was to coach his wrestling team in the district tournament the day after the shooting. It was postponed until Wednesday, the same day his funeral will be held.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was trying to move kids out of the way of the shooter and that is 100 percent Chris because he was looking out for them and they adored him for genuinely caring about them,\u201d said Allen Held, wrestling coach at Cypress Bay High who worked with Hixon at South Broward High. He recalled how Hixon would get down on the mat to practice moves with his athletes. \u201cHe was a positive coach \u2014 not a screamer \u2014 who always found the silver lining, even in a loss. We made a $1 bet when we wrestled against Douglas, and he handed me a $1 bill and I made it into a ring which I\u2019ll keep forever to remember what a great human being he was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hixon, named Broward County\u2019s Athletic Director of the Year in 2017, served in the Navy in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a shame that he fought in Iraq and comes back and gets killed on his home soil,\u201d Jacob said.<\/p>\n

Jesus Luzardo, an injured pitcher when Douglas won the 2016 state and national championships and now playing for the Oakland A\u2019s organization, has launched a Chris Hixon Student Athlete Scholarship Fund.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris was doing what he loved in the place he loved when he went down,\u201d Morford said. \u201cHe was as good a man as they come. Our hearts are broken.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve had a lot of thoughts after learning about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. When I taught at South Broward, Chris Hixon was a teacher there. For three years I went to that school once a month for weekend debate tournaments with my team. We had very different styles, but he was always helpful … Continue reading “MSD Shooting and the Loss of a Great Teacher”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-florida"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8e7kf-1jc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5035,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034\/revisions\/5035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}