"Jess Cecil Dixon lived a life of adventure, innovation and excitement - especially for his time."

Those were the words of his grand-niece, Patricia Vick Moody, who spoke Thursday in Andalusia when a replica of his "flying ginny" was unveiled and dedicated in Heritage Park. Dixon received a patent for the early helicopter he developed here with the help of Edwin Hand and Luke Feagin.

The elder Dixon was the second of Napoleon Bonaparte Dixon's six children with his second wife, Mary Agnes McGowin Dixon. Like his siblings, he grew up in Dixie, was educated in a one-room schoolhouse in the nearby Rome community and went on to study electrical engineering at Auburn University, then Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Moody said. Auburn records show that he was enrolled from 1904-1908 but left just shy of graduating due to "bad health."

Jess, along with his brothers Charles and Fred, served in the Army during World War I. Jess and Charles returned home, but Frid died in an Army camp of Spanish flu.

In 1918, at age 31, Jess married Claudia Kenall, and the couple had two children, Julian Kendall born in 1919, and Marie Cecile, born in 1924. Two of his grandchildren, Don Dixon and Julianne Dixon, were on hand for Thursday's ceremony.

After the war, Jess joined his brothers Charles and Solon in the turpentine business. But Jess loved aviation and machinery, and he was always "tinkering, inventing, and building something," Moody said, adding that he eventually sold his interest in the turpentine business to his brother Charles.

Before he developed the early helicopter, Jess Dixon built glider planes, Moody said.

"In 1929, he and my grandfather, Charles, began the Dixon Airport, the Andalusia area's first airport," she said. "Jess and Solon also bought a biplane and ran a school to teach locals how to fly. According to my Uncle Solon, a number of prominent businessmen learned to fly at their airport. Others would pay Jess or Solon for a one-time flight so they could see things from the air for the very first time."

In 1941, The Andalusia Star and The Birmingham News reported on his  patented helicopter. The News reporter called it the "dad-gummedest airplane you ever did see."

"The Dixon helicopter is capable of leaving the ground vertically, and flying through the air like a hummingbird, and can run on a paved thoroughfare like an automobile," The News reported. It could park in the garage and take off in the back yard.

The Star explained that the helicopter had two large lifting rotors in a single head, revolving in opposite directions. there were no wings and the rotors supplied the entire lift of the helicopter. Jess Dixon said the vehicle's 40-horsepower air-cooled engine was capable of moving it with a speed of from 0 to approximately 100 miles per hour.

Moody said a The Twin Coach company, a bus manufacturer, was impressed enough with Jess's Flying Ginny that it began a helicopter division and hired Jess as helicopter engineer. He and his family moved to Ohio for a while. During World War II, he and Solon took Jess's designs to St. Louis, Missouri, where the Lambert Brothers Co. purchased the rights to them, Moody said.

In the 1950s, Jess returned home to Andalusia. On a census form, he listed his occupation simply as "lumber man." In 1963, at age 77, he died of an aneurysm. He is buried in the Andalusia Memoria Cemetery.

It was in 2025, when Luke Zollinger, a Washington state mechanical and civil engineer, set out to write a book, “The Insider’s Guide to Engineering." While doing research for the book, he happened upon Dixon's flying ginny, and decided the iconic photograph should be on the cover of his book, a nod to Dixon's engineering ingenuity.

He reached out to the City of Andalusia for more information about the Dixon, and was connected to John Vick and to Sue Bass Wilson. It was during an in-person meeting with them earlier this year that the idea for the replica was born.

Vick raised the money to have Zollinger build and ship the replica, which the City agreed to place in Heritage Park. It was organizations founded by Jess Dixon's brothers - Charles Dixon and Co. and the Solon and Martha Dixon Foundation - that funded the replica, and Vick joined Jess's grandchildren, Don and Julianne Dixon, in sponsoring signage for the replica.

"Stories about Jess Dixon have always made him a sort of larger-than-life character, and it is fitting that his life and accomplishments are being remembered in this way," Mayor Earl Johnson said, adding that he believes the replica will draw people to the community and the new park.