Matel Dawson Jr., Philanthropic Auto Worker, Dies at 81
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Matel Dawson Jr., a forklift operator with a ninth-grade education who gave more than $1 million to universities for scholarships and to charities, died on Nov. 2 in his one-bedroom apartment in Highland Park, Mich. He was 81.
The cause was a heart attack, his daughter, JoAnn Agee, said.
Mr. Dawson amassed his nest egg by never taking vacations from work at the Ford’s Rouge complex in Dearborn, Mich., by building up overtime through routinely working 12-hour shifts, by living frugally and by investing in his employee stock plan.
He used the money to become a philanthropist in the last 10 years of his life, and appeared on “Oprah” and other television shows. He received numerous awards, including at least two honorary doctorates.
Mr. Dawson gave $680,000 to Wayne State University and $300,000 to Louisiana State University at Shreveport, officials at the universities said yesterday. He contributed $240,000 to the United Negro College Fund, the journal Black Issues in Higher Education reported last year. He also gave thousands of dollars to his church, the People’s Community Church in Detroit; other churches; community colleges; and civil rights organizations.
He never made more than $26 an hour and drove a 1995 red Escort. When President Bill Clinton invited him to the White House, Mr. Dawson’s first response was to ask whether the White House would make up for his lost wages. The answer was no. But he went anyway.
“I need money to make me happy,” he said in an interview in 1998 with Jet magazine. “It makes me happy to give money away. It gives me a good feeling.”
Mr. Dawson was born on Jan. 3, 1921, in Shreveport, the fifth of seven children. His father worked at jobs like groundskeeper and farmer and rose from dishwasher in a hospital to head cook. His mother took in laundry and left a bank account of $6,000 when she died.
“She could squeeze a buffalo right off a nickel,” Mr. Dawson said.
He dropped out of school to help support his family. In 1939, at 19, he left for Detroit, partly to escape racial segregation. He had two uncles who worked at Ford and he landed a job there. He began buying Ford stock in 1956 and it returned 13.7 percent a year on average, Time magazine reported in 1999.
In 1996, Ebony magazine said Mr. Dawson attributed his financial success to “the grace of Almighty God and the Ford Motor Company.”
When he divorced in 1977, his wife of 34 years was given their three-bedroom house, on which he had paid off the mortgage in six years, and their two Lincoln Continentals, Time said in 1999. From then on, he promised to live “below his means,” an article in About . . . Time said in 1999.
His first major gift was $30,000 to the United Negro College Fund in 1991. When his annual income was $60,000, in 1994, he gave $50,000 more.
In addition to his daughter, who lives in Farmington Hills, Mich., survivors include a brother, Clyde, of Detroit; a sister, Luella Fuller of Shreveport; and a grandson.
Until recently, he guarded the extent of his generosity. His supervisor at Ford, Cleveland Chandler, said in an Ebony interview that he did not know about the philanthropy until he heard about it on the radio. Mr. Chandler said Mr. Dawson, who retired in February, was always the one who collected money for sick workers.
“I just want to help people, leave a legacy and be remembered,” Mr. Dawson said last year in the interview in Black Issues in Higher Education.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company