One of the finest facilities of its kind in Ohio, the Athletic Center was built in 1981. During the campaign for building funds, the Kresge Foundation gave the largest grant in the College's history to the project: $200,000. Dr. Dixon and Charles Ross, then Vice President for Development, were instrumental in obtaining the grant. On February 14 Dixon agreed that his name could be presented, and the following March 31, Paul Dixon was elected president of Cedarville College. The Board of Trustees had tremendous respect for the ministry of James T. Jeremiah. They wanted their former president to be fully satisfied with his successor. Jeremiah and Dixon had a lengthy conversation which Jeremiah described: It was of the Lord, I believe, the way every– thing worked out. We see things much alike and we had for a long time before he became president. His philosophy of having a broad base for the organization to touch as many lives as you can, to try to minister to people instead of trying to restrict them, is exactly what I am for. 9 The two leaders shared many similarities. Both had a tremendous loyalty to the Regular Baptist movement and the principles of historic fundamentalism. Both had a firm commitment to the local church concept and a love for pastors. Jeremiah had manifested that by pastoring churches prior to coming to the presidency, Dixon by being a local church evangelist. Both men sought quality education within a Baptistic framework, but both wanted to make that education available to as broad a segment of the Bible-believing community as possible, given the institution's theological distinctives. But despite the similarities there were also major differences. The most obvious was that ISO/Chapter XVIII Jeremiah was a man who had led a college for 25 years. He had watched the institution grow from infancy to maturity, from the smallest educational institution of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches to the largest, from a college which was struggling to survive to one which was highly regarded in Christian circles. Now, as Jeremiah, with all his experience stepped aside, he saw the position going to a man who by his own admission had never managed anything except his own life and family! Dixon admitted that