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Henry Arthur Brizzee & Dora Coleman Brizzee Their daughter
Mildred Brizzee Dixon
In 1977 I was living in Phoenix, Arizona, at that time I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. One day my grandmother Viola McKellips Brizzee called me to talk, she said, look in the phone book, there are Brizzee’s that live in Mesa. I got my phone book and sure enough I found some Brizzee names. The first number I called was Genevieve Brizzee Emery, what a sweet lady. Genevieve invited me over to her home, she told me she had a cousin, Mildred Brizzee Dixon she wanted me to meet. I went to, Genevieve’s home and we drove over to, Mildred’s home, it was a small house. Genevieve & Mildred are the granddaughters of Henry Willard Brizzee & Ann Long Didsbury Brizzee and proud of it. It was a lot of fun spending time with these lady’s, we drove around Mesa and they showed me some of the old homes the Brizzee family’s lived in. I had my camera and took some photo’s but mostly I was writing down notes, they were both filling my head with family information. They took me to a restaurant where we ate lunch. We made it back to Mildred’s home. On her TV she had small frames with photo’s of her parents, Henry Arthur & Dora Coleman Brizzee. She had small frames with copy’s of 2 portraits of Henry Willard Brizzee & Ann Long Didsbury Brizzee. Mildred brought out a book to show me, it had photo’s of Henry Willard Brizzee in his Mormon Battalion uniform. The book was , Mormon Settlement in Arizona, Phoenix 1921, By, John M. McClintock. I used my 35 mm camera and tried taking photo’s of the photo’s she had in frames, Mildred even took the photo’s out of her frames for me. Mildred was a lot of fun to be with, her house was very simple, just what she needed, no junk sitting around. Her kitchen was pink, I remember how cute that was. Mildred would have liked to have bought new curtains for her front window but she didn’t want to waste the money. Once I met Mildred, she would write me letter’s to see how I was feeling, she wanted me to come back and visit again. At that time I really got sick and moved back to Sacramento, California, so the only contact I had with Mildred & Genevieve was writing letter’s to each other. Mildred gave me the pedigree charts on Henry Willard Brizzee & Ann Long Didsbury Brizzee so we can all thank her for her hard work. What a special lady, I am so glad I was able to meet her and spend time with her. Mildred told me her son, Jack Redmond played baseball with the Washington Senators.
Letter & photo’s courtesy of, Donna Brizzee Ford |
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5 Acres
Mildred Brizzee Dixon
Mildred Brizzee Dixon, donated 5 acres to the city of Mesa, for a Park-Tennis Courts area.
Mildred was hoping the City of Mesa, would name this park,
The Brizzee Park
On Mildred’s obituary it reads, she was honored at the dedication of the Pioneer Monument at Pioneer Park in Mesa.
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Family Story
Compiled by, Mildred Brizzee Dixon
John Edward Brizzee, was a younger brother then my father (Henry Arthur Brizzee) & older then your grandfather, William Everett Brizzee. He married Zula Pomeroy and they had a son, Ralph Brizzee, Aunt Zula was a Robson girl and she was the Milliner at the old Coop & trimmed all our hats. Later she married a man by Mock that owned the theaters. She had a daughter that lived in San Francisco area. May have died there. Ralph died, he lived in Miami, Arizona. Hebe MacDonald married papas sister Melissa who was older then he was, they had a child Marguerite MacDonald who grandma (Ann Long Didsbury Brizzee) & Aunt Lorana raised, all died early. This could be the girl in the photo with Ann Long Didsbury Brizzee. |
