Esther Bixler

Present address: 206 Spring Garden Street, Easton, Pa.

January 1905 Kalends:

Esther Bixler has been visiting Patricia Easley, '04, at her home in Wilmington, Del.

November 1905 Kalends:

Esther Bixler has been visiting in Baltimore.

January 1909 Kalends:

Esther Bixler is attending the Nurses' Training School of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

July 1929 Alumnae Quarterly:

Esther Bixler is a volunteer worker on the Board of Trustees of the Mothers' Assistance Fund of Northampton County, Pa.

July 1930 Alumnae Quarterly:

Esther Bixler keeps home for her aged father, yet finds time to be Secretary-Treasurer to the Board of Trustees of the Mothers' Assistance Fund.

July 1931 Alumnae Quarterly:

Esther Bixler whose conscientious work is responsible for the excellent 1903 notes in the Quarterly writes of herself-"For the past five or six years I have been on driving trips with my father. I began when he was eighty-one. We had a lovely birthday party for him in the Green Dragon Tea Room at Wellesley, where one of his granddaughters was a Junior. The girls were dear and the campus beautiful. We have also visited other granddaughters - his, not mine - at Smith and stayed at both Wellesley and Northampton. Both are wonderful and the girls fine, but my pride in Goucher is not dimmed.
I am still at home. Do not smoke, have not cut my hair, and have had only one permanent and that under pressure. I cook and bake and can work in a garden breaking the earth with my hands. And I am still on the Northampton COunty Board of Mothers' Assistance Fund. THis work is most interesting and gives on esuch a fine feeling to know that with the aid of actualy dollars and cents, we can pull a mother and her dependent children over a difficult period.
And I still drive, although I can hike sixteen miles at a pinch without notice. I do not, like Marion Dibert, 'rise up out of the garden to play tennis' for tennis was never my long suit. However, I do count myself among the husky ones.
I am only waiting for Goucher to be spread out on the new campus. I am sure then her name will go far and wide for her campus is the loveliest I have ever seen."

July 1935 Alumnae Quarterly:

Esther Bixler and Carrie Fehr, at the last minue, drove down from Easton, Pa., for reunion, proving the wisdom of the adage "Better Late than never." Nancy Catching Shields joined them to represent 1903 at the alumnae banquet.

November 1936 Alumnae Quarterly:

Esther Bixler spent some weeks this summer in the BLue Ridge MOuntains of Western North Carolina, and the Smoky Mountains in Eastern Tennessee and promises a rare treat in store for those who have not yet seen this section. She writes "My center was Blowing ROck, so named for a huge rock in the upper part of the town, which hangs swing-like over a mammoth gorge, extending sheer down seven hundred feet- a gigantic bowl, steep-sided, overgrown with evergreens and other trees, Across the edges of the bowl, some three miles, lies the Grandfather Mountain-his massive head thrown back in slumber, his forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and chest clearly outlined, and if you look closely you can see the torso, legs and feet. Some folks see the eyelashes and impudent tongue extended.
The air currents which pervade this gorge are so coursed that a handkerchief tossed out from the rock is immediately returned. The rock itself is in three or four sections, huge, thin, graceful plates which resemble giant sheets blowing in the wind.
The entire range, including the Smoky Mountains, consists of hundreds of peaks and gorges. Peaks rise from 2300 feet to 6700 feet in height. Lovely vistas, warm at noon, hazy and blue or pink and purple at sunset, dark and somber in the midnight moon.
Magnificent roads and ornamental bridges are being built everywhere, penetrating the most hidden corner of the mountains-marvels of engineering. One hardly realizes one is climbing so gradual is the incline. The roads are forty and fifty feet wide, including shoulders, hairpin curves, one after another.
Mountain houses, some dilapidated, some neat and tidy and prosperous dot the mountain side. Electricity, telephones, radios andmotors are fast turning these once secluded nooks and corners into live spots.
State and Federal government are doing the work. Hundreds of men are seen upon the smallest to the largest projects. Convicts are called into service.
Mountain schools stand everywhere. These schools, called into being by private initiative and philanthropy, are gradually passing the educational side over to the state and county. The industrial side will remain under philanthropic hands.
If you wish to see the primitive mountains, go quickly, for they are fast becoming a legend."

July 1937 Alumnae Quarterly:

Esther Bixler has been dismantling her old home during May. She is in "a very unusual apartment-the first floor of an old home made over. It is large and spacious, with a large garden in which to play.

July 1939 Alumnae Quarterly:

"FOr myself, I have just been at home, keeping a family together as best I could, and now that all have gone, I am enjoying life as it moves along, even if I have not made history and probably never shall.
I have a home of my own, with garden and books. My lot still seems to be thrown with the older people. I drive and take them here and there, and have a Sunday School Class, aged 60 to 80 years. What with my car-on-call, my books and garden, church and social service, hours and days soon go. I have travelled but little and probably shall do so only through books and reading, but that is good. What more can one ask?"

February 1940 Alumnae Quarterly:

Esther Bixler had the misfortune to fall in the aisle of one of Easton's (Pa.) brand new city busses, and fracture the fifth dorsal vertebra and a rib. She has been in the hospital four weweks at this time (January 9) and hopes that she is past the half-way mark. Almost miraculously, she is not paralyzed, and expects to make a complete recovery.

May 1940 Alumnae Quarterly:

Her friends feel that no more fitting tribute could be paid to Esther Bixler, who died on Good Friday in Easton, Pa., than a part of this address:
"When a life shows forth the beauty of a gentle spirit, the radiance of a charitable heart, and the devotion of a consecrated soul, one is aware that Christ has been bidden to abide in that life. It may be said, with all who know her attesting to its truth, that Miss Bixler reflected the mind of Jesus Christ in all her associations."
This poem, found among her papers after her death, had evidently meant much to her, and typifies her unselfish spirit:
MY DAILY PRAYER

Let me not shut myself within myself,
Nor dedicate my days to petty things,
Let there be many windows in my life.

The entrance to my heart, a door that swings,
Where through I go and come, with eyes that smile,
And folk without, as gladly come to me,
That haply I may learn the things worthwhile-
The art of human kindness and love.

Save me from self-preferment, that would gain
Its cloistered place, self-sheltered from the strife,
But purposeful, and calm, and sweet, and sane,
Lord, keep me in the living-roon of life.