NEWS

Funeral director honored for 50 years of service

Joe Williams
Reporter

COSHOCTON – This year, Memorial Day falls on Monday, May 25, but that day also marks a golden anniversary for retired funeral director R. Stephen Dawson.

Dawson received his state funeral director’s license on May 25, 1965, and his embalmer’s license on June 15, 1965. The Ohio Funeral Directors Association honored him for reaching that 50th anniversary during the group’s annual meeting April 29 through May 1 in Columbus.

“It was quite an accomplishment,” said Jessica Paisley, funeral director and manager of the Given-Dawson Funeral Home, Coshocton.

“He’s a huge part of our community,” Paisley continued. “Everyone knows Steve Dawson or the Dawson Funeral Home Service.”

Local residents know Dawson through the funeral home, an early ambulance service and his monument company, Paisley said, and they tell of how he “helped people out in their worst times of need.”

Dawson worked in the family business, started by his grandfather, Arthur Elmer Dawson, as Dawson and Mooney in 1913 in Conesville. Stephen apprenticed with his father, Robert T. Dawson, who had followed his father into the business.

The company moved to Roscoe Village in 1930, where Uncorked now sits; into town on McClain Avenue in the mid-1930s; and later to 186 Park Ave., where the firm has been known as Given-Dawson Funeral Home since its merger in 1981.

Robert Dawson sold the business in 1981, shortly after his wife died in 1980, but stayed involved as a figurehead, his son said.

Stephen Dawson, now 72, retired at age 62 in 2004.

“Dad and Granddad both worked until the time they were unable,” he said, “but what do you work for? At 62, I said: ‘See you later. Goodbye.’ ”

He goes in to work a couple of times a year.

“I will go in if I get a request from a family member,” he said.

“He’s a walking encyclopedia for us,” Paisley said. “He knows everyone and everything.”

Dawson attended Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in chemistry, but dropped out in his junior year after deciding “a liberal arts education is not for me.”

However, that two years of post-high school education did count toward Dawson’s chosen career, along with one year in embalming school, a one-year apprenticeship with the family business and then passing the state boards.

Requirements have evolved through the years. Dawson’s grandfather had to study for only two weeks in Columbus before he got his license. His father completed high school, a yearlong embalming school, the one-year apprenticeship and then passed the state boards.

The business has changed in other ways as well. Increased regulation requires more paperwork, he said. Costs have increased. A solid oak casket cost $1,295 in 1972 but now runs about $12,000. Although the company used to maintain a casket inventory, samples are now all represented on video.

His younger brother decided not to join the funeral home business after accompanying their grandfather on an ambulance call in which a young girl had been caught beneath a dump truck. He eventually retired from Nationwide Insurance, in Columbus.

Dawson earned satisfaction from his work.

“I just enjoyed being able to create a product that the family was satisfied with,” he said. “We tried to create a lifelike presentation.”

Since late 1987, Dawson has lived in Linton Township, south of Coshocton. His daughter and her family live in the Fresno area.

These days, he enjoys researching family history, tracing his roots “across the pond” and, in season, hunting deer with a friend.

jwilliams6@coshoctontribune.com

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