Going The Extra MIle

EDITOR’S NOTE: Tom Lindley is national editor of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., the Alabama-based media company that owns and operates more than 90 daily newspapers in 21 states. He has also served as publisher and editor for The Evening News and The Tribune.

When Carol Dawson’s father sent her off to the University of Arkansas in the 1970s, he gave her an extra $1,000. Spending money, he said.

Upon returning home after her freshman year, she was asked about the money. “Gone,” she told her father, who had traveled the world during a military career. “Gone?” he replied, a little astonished. “What did you buy? Clothes?”

Without hesitation, she answered. “No. Pizza.” He was dumbfounded. How could someone eat that much pizza, especially when her meals were included in her university-lodging plan? “Oh, I bought pizza for everyone in the dorm.” That included not only the women who lived on the same floor, but anyone who was hungry and wanted a slice or two.

The days of buying pizza for all in sight might belong to yesteryear, but the personality trait acquired and refined in those college days lives on.

Carol Dawson, a citizen columnist for The Evening News in Jeffersonville, and its sister paper The Tribune in New Albany, recently received the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists at the group’s annual convention.

The award recognized a columnist whose work has positively affected readers’ lives and produced tangible benefits for the community.

It’s been said that Rogers, the great philosopher-humorist from Oklahoma, never met a man he didn’t like. The 52-year-old Dawson takes a most similar view toward people. Her column focuses on those behind-the-scenes folk who step forward and do great things quietly for their neighbors and communities. It’s called the “Extra Miler.”

The idea that she would become an award-winning columnist and share the convention’s spotlight in New Orleans with such a big-league star as the Boston Globe’s Ellen Goodman – who received a lifetime achievement award — is as improbable as the notion she’d ever get her own byline.

“I didn’t even write for my high school paper,” said Dawson, who volunteered to author the column for The Evening News and The Tribune a half-dozen years ago after retiring from a career with the U.S. Labor Department and starting her own consulting company.

If she was short on experience, she wasn’t on determination and confidence. Dawson knew she could write and she felt that an important story about the town her husband and family had settled in wasn’t being told. Negative news dominated the media, she felt, “and that was not the Southern Indiana I know.”

Her idea of publicizing “random acts of kindness” in a column initially won tepid approval, even causing one editor to say what she was proposing wasn’t “real journalism.” The column was originally consigned to a spot behind the sports section.

But a change of editors brought front-section display, and wider public recognition. “Journalists take a lot of heat for only reporting the negatives,” said Steve Kozarovich, former executive editor of the Jeffersonville and New Albany papers. “This is a perfect way to establish a better balance.”

Cindy Kanning, a friend and mentor, said Dawson’s work goes far beyond informing, influencing and entertaining. “A writer should make a difference,” Kanning said. “(The work) should bring people together, cause change or be innovative.”

Talking about the people she writes about, Dawson said she was reminded of a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in this world.”

That’s what she set out to do, and she found out there was already a small army of people plowing the fields of good deeds. “The majority of people in Southern Indiana, not the minority, when they think something needs to be changed, they are willing to step up to it.”

Since its inception in 2004, Dawson’s column has recognized more than 150 Extra Milers. The recipients have come from all walks of life – those who work with the elderly and frail, firefighters, Hurricane Katrina volunteers, and soldiers fighting in far-off lands have been just a few topics. If there is one common trait, she observed, it is that all seem to have a faith in a “higher, stronger being.”

Dawson saw those traits in Louise Ross, a retired teacher who has devoted many hours to helping at-risk children and the Hospice program. “When I give, it’s because I want to. It’s not for the attention,” Mrs. Ross said.

Her philosophy is simple: material things aren’t important, but people are. After agreeing to be interviewed, Dawson “pegged me right to the core.”

Doug Drake, who is a professional counselor, also had to be talked into an interview about his volunteer work with and fundraising for cancer patients. “I like to do things behind the scenes,” he said.

Dawson convinced him that his group could benefit from exposure in the newspaper. And she was right. “Her column reached a whole different demographic,” he said.

Dawson said she’s had no trouble finding people to profile. Nominations have come from every communications mechanism possible. There is one caveat to her selection process, though. Those whose work is frequently mentioned in the media are disqualified. That means you won’t read about the CEOs, politicians and civic leaders in her monthly column.

One thing she tries very hard to do is tell the public about the lives of those people who would otherwise rarely have their names in the paper. Her hope is that by sharing their inspiring stories, it will cause others to do good things.

And it works. Her column has even developed a national following on the Web. One of her favorite messages of appreciation, Dawson said, came from a person in Arizona she has never met.

“I am not from your part of the country,” the note began, “but daresay that YOU would be my first nominee were I able to qualify as a resident of your community. Kindness does abound, and there could be even more of it. My experience shows — and a lot of behavioral data confirm — that the first step toward increasing a behavior involves identification and reinforcement of that behavior. Your column does this. Thank you for your admiration ... with applause.”

That’s heavy praise for a person who only wanted to make a difference. Whether it’s been writing about someone helping a hurricane victim or just sharing a pizza with college friends, Carol Dawson has found her way to step forward and go that extra mile to help others.

Clark County

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How a local citizen journalist won national acclaim by writing about people helping people in her community

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