Ozarks Voices: Joan Dix, June 16, 2022
Interview with Joan Dix by Tom Peters, Dean of Library Services at Missouri State University. Ms. Dix was a schoolteacher and counselor in Shannon County, Missouri. This interview took place on June 16, 2022, at the Shannon County Museum in Eminence, Missouri.
Topics discussed during the interview include: her father’s hydro-electric house and property taken by the National Park Service; the family electronics business; challenges of early years living in the rural Ozarks; moving back and forth between Chicago and Eminence, Missouri as a child; attending nursing school; marriage and family; building a house; rural electrification coming to Shannon County in 1955; her parents’ divorce; getting a degree in education from Southwest Missouri State College (Missouri State University); teaching elementary school, remedial language arts, and math; working as a school counselor; tourism in Eminence; summer work at a trail riding center for several decades; genealogy work performed by Ms. Dix and her husband; influx of outsiders moving into the Ozarks.