DIXON, CA (MPG) - John Knight, namesake for Dixon’s John Knight Middle School, quietly passed this last Sunday evening in the hospital.

Knight was born in 1948 in Sacramento, just one week to the day before Dan Rott, a childhood classmate, long-time friend, and fellow educator.

“John was my first friend,” said Rott, a former Dixon Unified School District teacher and principal. “We met when we were 6 years old and played a lot of baseball together. John was a tremendous fan especially as it relates to the San Francisco Giants. He was a pitcher on the DHS baseball team.” Until recently, the men would often get together for lunch and visit.

Knight’s father and mother married in 1946. His father, Virgil Knight, was the local dentist and his mother was a stay-at-home mom. John was their first born, followed by brother Jim in 1951, and sister Anne three years later. He attended Dixon schools, graduating from DHS and lettering all four years in the sport of baseball.

Following graduation, he went to Stanford, where he met his wife, Sharon Sisk, at Stanford’s exchange program in England during their sophomore year. John joined the USAF Reserves at Hamilton AFB in Marin in 1971. He married Sharon that same year, and had two daughters, Heather, a columnist for the S.F. Chronicle and Beth, a teacher in San Rafael.

When Knight accepted his first teaching position in Dixon, he told his father it would be for one year. Then, 37 years later he retired from Dixon Unified School District. He spent his first five years teaching English; was Vice-Principal for three years; then principal for 12 years. After DHS, he was the Maine Prairie High School principal for 13 years; then district personnel director before he retired in 2006.

“In the school district, we worked together, and it appeared to me that everyone had respect for him,” Rott said. “From those in a little bit of trouble to the very best students and the staff, they all respected him and felt comfortable with him. Nobody felt threatened by John and he was able to get people to talk and discuss issues – even baseball.”

Bob Giannoni, another long-time friend who also went through Dixon schools with Knight, shared similar sentiments.

“He was a good all-around guy,” he said. “He worked wonders with those kids and got respect with them really quickly. He must have had almost every job in the district but most importantly, the students cared about him and he cared about them. You could bounce any idea off him and he had an opinion and would be right. He was smart as hell and…a very good pitcher.”

Rott shared the story about when he came to teach in Dixon after teaching 15 years in the Travis School District and was ‘warned’ about Knight.

“I was figuring out who was who and the gentlemen who was the principal at the high school told me ‘you’re going to do just fine but whenever we have a large event at school, never follow John Knight.’ That was because he was so funny and so engaging with whatever he said that anybody else coming up after him was a vanilla flavor,” Rott explained with a chuckle.

“John was always just nice to everyone,” said another classmate and friend, Jeanne Fry-Bei. “He was a great guy when I was in high school with him and he never changed. He was smart, friendly, and genuine.”

Many friends visited over the weekend with Knight and word spread sadly of his passing. Knight touched the lives of countless individuals. When the renovation of the old Dixon High School was completed in August of 2021, it was named the John Knight Middle School in his honor.