The Pasadena ISD Board of Trustees named the district’s new middle school located on Hughes Road in Houston the Dr. Dixie Melillo Middle School.

The school was named after Melillo to honor her for her work in providing breast cancer screening and diagnosis to Texas women at The Rose, the nonprofit organization she founded in 1986.

Melillo didn’t finish high school through her senior year, dropping out at the age of 17 with two children. But Melillo persevered in her quest for education and obtained her GED. Melillo made history as she was the second woman to graduate from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston as a surgeon.

Melillo was also the first female surgeon to work at Bayshore Medical Center and the first woman to serve as Chair of the Department of Surgery. The Rose serves over 43,000 women providing breast cancer education, screening and diagnosis. She established Bayshore’s breast cancer screening program in 1984.

Melillo has received numerous awards and honors due to her outstanding contributions to the community and women’s health. In 1985, she was selected as one of the “Ten Top Women On the Move” by The Houston Post and Texas Executive Women, and she received the Mayor’s Volunteers of the Year Award in the Health Category from Mayor Katherine J. Whitmire in 1988. Melillo was also presented as part of the Congressional Record in June of 1995 for recognition of her work as a distinguished physician.

“Dr. Melillo is a wonderful example of the determination to succeed, the love for learning and the desire to make a difference in this world that we want our students in Pasadena ISD to have,” said Pasadena ISD Superintendent Kirk Lewis. “Our students are faced with many challenges throughout their educational careers such as Dr. Melillo was, and we know that they, like her, will never give up on their dreams. It is only right to have one of our schools named in her honor.”