Moses Saxon: Devoted to Westbury, headed taxi commission

A day before he passed away on April 1 from the coronavirus, Moses Saxon, 88, grabbed hold of his cellphone and called his wife, Jean, from NYU Winthrop Hospital. He was having difficulty breathing, but the first question out of his mouth was: “How are you?”

“He cared about me. He really did,” said Jean, who was married to Saxon for 63 years. “He really looked after me.”

Saxon was born Oct. 18, 1931, in Allendale, South Carolina. He met Jean in 1956, when he was working part time at a cafe while taking classes at South Carolina State College. He spent four years serving in the Air Force. After being discharged in 1959, he and Jean moved to Long Island, settling in Hempstead before making Westbury their permanent home.

In 1963, Saxon joined the New York City Transit Authority, starting as a subway conductor and retiring after three decades as the deputy director of operations and planning. While he was stationed in Brooklyn, he would walk over to the A&S department store during his lunch break to find different outfits he could buy for his wife.

That thoughtfulness extended into his community as well, where Saxon served as the past president of the Birchwood Knolls Civic Association and as the treasurer and president of the Westbury-Carle Place AARP. The neighborhood’s unofficial watchman, he kept an eye out for streetlights that were out in the village or if people weren’t abiding by the law.

“He was a civic minded person. He cared about the people in his community and did everything to keep them going,” said Jean Saxon. “He wanted the community to always be beautiful.”

For the last 20 years, he had been serving as the chairman of the Westbury Taxi Commission, a role he served with “a lot of conscientiousness,” said village Mayor Peter Cavallaro.

“He took it very seriously and managed that part of village function so that I or the board didn’t have to worry about it,” said Cavallaro. “He spent a lot of time on it and took it very seriously.”

Saxon also left a legacy at the Doric Lodge 53 of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of New York in West Hempstead, where he was awarded the title of Master Mason of the Year last year and was named a District Deputy Grandmaster Emeritus.

“He was known by the other brothers as a teacher’s teacher,” said Glenis Larios of Westbury, a close family friend who considered Saxon a grandfather-figure. “Even if they thought they knew something, he would teach them a little bit more.

In addition to his wife, Saxon is survived by his son, Moses Saxon III; a grandson and two great-granchildren; and a sister, Bernice Gill. Another son, Michael, predeceased him.