| |
Dottie Patterson—Golden Acorn Award Winner
 Each
August the Deercreek Home and Garden Club opens its year
by honoring a resident whom members want to recognize
for his or her dedication to our community. This year we
honor Dottie Patterson. Dottie and Dick Patterson have
been Heather Lake residents since 1993. Dottie’s
outstanding involvement in Deercreek and the wider
Jacksonville community was recognized in an interview
with the Deercreek Community News for a front-page
article in July 2004. In honor of her receiving the
Golden Acorn Award, that 2004 article is reprinted on
the Home and Garden Club page of our website at
www.deercreekcc.com. Now we have the opportunity to fill
in some of the details.
Originally growing up on an Illinois farm, Dottie and
her family moved to Chicago in 1939, where she met Dick
in 1949. They married in 1950, and at that time, Dick,
originally from Texas and looking for a warmer climate,
asked Dottie, “How long do I have to stay in Chicago?”
“Fifteen years,” was Dottie’s reply. Sixteen years
later, in 1966, Dottie and Dick and their three
children, Gary, Gail and Guy, moved to Jacksonville.
They feel very fortunate that all three of their
children and seven grandchildren live in Florida.
The Home and Garden Club has benefited from Dottie’s
involvement from the beginning. She served as its
president, vice-president, and luminaries program
chairman, and she regularly decorates the guardhouse for
holidays. In 1999 she found the deer statue that is on
Deercreek Club Road near the Edgewater entrance. She has
been a model for many fashion shows, and she annually
swears in all new board members with her personally
written oath. And that only covers her Home and Garden
Club activities. Dottie has also served on the board of
the Women’s Alliance and has worked at the Treasure
Chest, the hospice thrift shop that the Alliance
supports.
Dottie’s involvement extends beyond the Deercreek gate.
She is a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Guild and
volunteers as a docent at the annual Showcase Home that
raises funds for the symphony. She regularly attends the
Coffee Series at the symphony. Though her mother, a
resident at the assisted living facility Taylor Home,
passed away two years ago, Dottie continues to volunteer
at Taylor Home by conducting bunko games for residents
each month. Her familiar face must brighten lives there.
Dottie’s influence reaches even beyond the Jacksonville
area. She is president of the American Business Women’s
Association (ABWA—affectionately known as “A Broad With
Ambition”). She has been a member for thirty-five years
and is in her twenty-sixth year of hosting ABWA’s annual
conference for the Florida and Georgia region. This
year’s topic will be “Engage, Entice and Experience.”
For 43 years, Dottie has also been a member of Beta
Sigma Phi, a sorority that, along with the ABWA, raises
money for scholarships.
Always ready with a smile, a joke (some of which are
not printable here) and a wonderful outlook, Dottie
exemplifies what it means to live life to the fullest
while making the world a better place.
Congratulations, Dottie, on a
well-deserved award!
|
|
