Soon she ran off with an engineer who could provide a life for her that Maxwell could not. She complained that she wanted a stable household with a good earner, and felt that Maxwell's inability to abandon his lineman's job for greener pastures was a liability. While Maxwell did not want a woman like his mother, he found the opposite problem in Norma. He soon started dating a woman named Norma Lynn, who was a billing clerk at the electric company, and they eventually married.
Maxwell found a steady job with the electric company, but his income was limited. When Maxwell was 24 years old, his mother had a heart attack and died soon thereafter. Instead she suggested he find work at the local electric company, which Maxwell pursued instead, getting a job as a lineman. Anita, not wanting her son to become a failure like his father, lied that he was rejected from college. After Maxwell graduated high school he announced his plans to go to the university to pursue a degree in electrical engineering. This resulted in Anita becoming overprotective of her son. One day Jonathan Dillon announced he was running off with another woman and left Anita and Maxwell to fend for themselves. As a child, Max often moved from one town to the next due to his father Jonathan's difficulty in holding down steady employment. Maxwell Dillon was born in Endicott, New York, the son of Jonathan and Anita Dillon.