Engineer, amateur photographer behind Mystery Photo
When Wheeling, W.Va., writer and photographer Jim Thornton donated several hundred images of the Washington area in the 1950s, made from negatives he found at a flea market, to the Observer-Reporter, he thought it might be possible for the newspaper to identify the photographer who took those pictures. Over the past year or so, half a dozen of those pictures were published in the Mystery Photo feature. Although most of the people and places in those photos were identified by our readers, no one could recall who took them.
Until last week.
After the current Mystery Photo was printed on Monday, Jacob Dodson of Orrville, Ohio, emailed us a nearly identical photo (with the dog facing the camera in that one).
“This was in my parents’ photo album,” Dodson wrote. “This photo is of Bryce Dodson, right, and George Dodson. Bryce is my father, though now deceased.”
The photographer was Donald E. Dodson, the boys’ father. The elder Dodson worked as an electrical engineer for McGraw-Edison Power Systems in Canonsburg, and he also was a photographer who worked many local weddings in the 1950s and 1960s, developing and printing in the family’s home at 214 1/2 Wilson Ave., Washington, where the Mystery Photo was taken, probably in 1952.
“He had a passion for photography,” said his son George from his home in Chester, Md. “He took photography to a whole new level, as dads often do. … He always had a camera in his hands.”
George said his father also took photos for his church, First Baptist Church of Washington. The Dodson family moved to West Alexander in 1968. Donald Dodson died in 1980.
Jacob Dodson also sent us a clipping of a feature article from the July 16, 1964, Washington Reporter that is further evidence of his identification. The article and photo are of Rosemary Dodson, the mother of the boys in the photo, and her collection of trivets, numbering 170 at that time. Rosemary Dodson also ran a neighborhood kindergarten class.
A few members of the Washington High School Class of 1954 called to identify Bryce Dodson, who had a 34-year career with the academic publisher Prentice Hall. He and his wife, Pamela, lived in the family home in West Alexander, which they ran as the Valentine Inn bed and breakfast. Bryce died in 2012 and Pamela in 2014.
George Dodson followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a professional photographer in the Washington, D.C., area.
”Dad gave me that gift,” he said.
He and his wife, Kathleen, started a publishing company together. Their daughter, Megan, inherited her grandmother’s trivet collection.
George Dodson said the name of the cocker spaniel in the photo was Countess.
Chuck Crouse of Washington also contacted us to identify the boys.
”Don and Rosie were wonderful people. They were close friends of my parents. The whole family was wonderful,” he said.
John Barnes of McMurray also remembers the family well.
”When I was young, I spent time with Don Dodson in his darkroom,” Barnes wrote. “Perry Como, at the height of his popularity (circa 1964) serenaded Mrs. Dodson at the basement doorway of that house while visiting his niece in Mrs. Dodson’s kindergarten class.”
Observer-Reporter.