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Graduation
Special | Fall 2004
Skipping
to The End
An architecture student is the
oldest male to graduate in the school’s history
By Marti
Harvey
The Shorthorn Staff
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| The Shorthorn: Mark Roberts |
| After working odd jobs and taking
on responsibilities that forced his college career
to the back burner, architecture senior Jan “Skip”
Dawson, 57, is finally getting his degree. |
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His dream job became available. The interview
went well. He thought he had it in the bag.
Then the issue of having a degree came up.
He didn’t have one, so he didn’t get the job.
Although Jan “Skip” Dawson knew he had the skills to
teach drafting, he didn’t have the credentials.
“That was one of the worst days of my life,” he said.
“It stung to be told that just because you don’t have
that piece of paper, you’re not good enough.”
But on Dec. 11, Dawson, now 57, will become the oldest male graduate
in the School of Architecture’s history. After 30 years of
on and off schooling, he will finish his degree.
In honor of the occasion, he and his family are naming his graduation
party the “Against All Odds Graduation Celebration.”
If he passes the certification exam next month, he will become an
architect and fulfill a lifelong dream.
Dawson always knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. He just
took a longer road to get there than others.
His uncle, Dallas architect Arnold Weatherford, sparked his passion
when he was just a child.
“I loved to hang around in his office and use his pens,”
Dawson said. “I just loved everything about his tools.”
He even worked part time for his uncle when he was in high school,
learning about drawing and drafting.
Then, as Dawson says, “Life happened.” He dropped out
of high school when he was 17 and joined the Marines. Although he
received his GED while serving, he went back to high school at 19
and graduated when he was 20.
“I guess I’m always going back and fixing my mistakes,”
he said.
Even after a stint with the Texas Highway Patrol and seven years
with the Greenville Police Department, architecture was still his
passion, but it took a life-threatening incident to make him realize
it.
One night, Dawson pulled over a suspect who turned his car around
to avoid a police checkpoint. The man attacked him inside his squad
car, choking him with his nightstick. In self-defense, Dawson pulled
his gun and it went off, shooting his attacker.
The suspect, wounded, then turned the gun on him.
But Dawson lucked out.
He later learned the gun had failed momentarily, giving him enough
time to wrestle away from the man and get to safety.
“My life literally flashed through my head,” he said.
“I thought it was over. It really caused me to rethink this
life.”
At the time, Dawson was married and had a 2-year-old son. He enrolled
in UTA in 1979, but the pressure of a family, a full-time job and
going to school was too much.
Dawson relented and went back to work as a security guard for Montgomery
Ward.
“I think I felt that going back into security work was safe,”
he said.
But things at home were not going well, and he soon got a divorce.
With a fresh start, he decided to try school yet again.
His drawing professor at the time, Lee Wright, who still teaches
here, remembers when he first met Dawson, who had a broken hand.
Dawson became a proficient lefty in just a couple of weeks, which
Wright attributes to his tenacity.
“You don’t want to tell him he can’t do something
because he will set out to prove you wrong,” he said.
But as Dawson often says, “The best-made plans of mice and
men seldom work out.” Money was short, so he had to leave
school once again.
During the next few years, he had jobs driving a truck and selling
burial plots door-to-door in Oak Cliff.
“That was awful,” he said. “But I was pretty good
at it.”
During this time, Dawson met his wife-to-be, Lisa, who he said encouraged
him to go into business for himself. He created renderings of buildings
for architectural firms and did drafting work. He also took an AutoCAD
course from the Continuing Education Department and then contracted
his talents out to several firms.
For 20 years, life was good.
But then the work dried up.
“Skip realized he needed to increase his skills if he was
going to keep up,” Lisa said. “He had just pulled and
yanked me through college, so I told him it was his turn.”
Now she thinks back to that day when the dream job fell through.
“While that was one of the worst days in his life, the next
day was one of the best,” she said.
That was the day in 2002 when he enrolled at UTA for his final run
at being an architect.
Since then, Wright said, Dawson has been an impressive student.
He has fit in very nicely without even trying, he said.
And Wright, who has become good friends with the aspiring architect,
often tells students Dawson’s story, hoping to inspire them.
“I think the world of him,” Wright said. “I think
we should salute any student who comes back and tells himself that
this time, today, they will succeed.”
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