This longtime community volunteer is creating a legacy of hope.
By June Mathews
Charlotte Ann Dawson could write a book about organizing a successful event on a shoestring. When she cobbled together the first Charlotte Ann Dawson’s Fun Walk and Run in 2024, she handed out some flyers, invited anybody she could think of who might come, solicited bottled water from some local stores, and put up a few decorations in the pavilion at Patriots Park.
From that inauspicious beginning, over $3,000 was raised to benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama (BCRFA), a cause in which Dawson has a personal interest. Currently going through her second round of treatments for triple-negative breast cancer, the 81-year-old Alabaster resident hopes that she or anyone else dealing with breast cancer might one day benefit from her efforts. “With the triple-negative, you have no receptors, and you can’t ever take any of the pills that most people who have breast cancer can,” Dawson says. “This kind of cancer is aggressive, one of the most likely to come back, and the hardest to treat. Mine came back in less than a year.”
But Dawson soldiers on for others as much as for herself. A community volunteer for many years, she is no stranger to giving back. “I started volunteering at Shelby Baptist in January 2006, nearly 20 years ago, but I haven’t been back since COVID, except to fill in occasionally,” she says. “When I was active there, I worked on Wednesdays and was the first volunteer in the cardiac catheterization lab. I was thinking about going back when cancer hit in November 2023. After I finished chemo, I again thought about going back, but I never did.”
Dawson also served several years on the Alabaster Beautification Board, including two years as board president. Very much a hands-on group, board members made regular rounds of the city’s “Welcome to Alabaster” signs to water and care for the flowers planted at each one. Dawson and another board member planted the first flowers ever planted at Veterans Park. And her heart for volunteering naturally extends to her church, Christ the King Lutheran in Hoover, where Dawson serves as an elder.
But as her journey with breast cancer deepened, Dawson’s desire to make a difference in a big way in the fight against the disease became stronger. So, she turned her volunteer efforts in that direction. Upon learning that breast cancer support groups existed in the Birmingham area, but none near Alabaster, she tried starting one at her church. The response, however, was minimal.She then considered how she could support the cause through established nonprofits and discovered the BCRFA. With the organization’s help, the first Charlotte Ann Dawson’s Fun Walk and Run came to be.
With one successful event under her belt, Dawson began to plan for a second one for October 2025. In the meantime, however, an unexpected blow was dealt: her cancer returned. But her determination to continue the fight was unwavering, and her plans for a follow-up event proceeded. “I just feel called to do this,” she says, “but sometimes I have a good week, and sometimes I don’t. So, I’m hoping and praying that I’ll feel good that day. But I’m going to be there, regardless of how I feel. I’ve had a lot coming at me in the last two years, and I’ve had to give up some things, but this is too important to miss.”
Due to a compromised immune system, Dawson has been forced to either modify or temporarily put aside some of her activities.
I can’t do a lot of the things now that I used to do,” she said. “As an elder, I have 20 families in my church that I call every month to see how they are and what’s going on, but if someone is in the hospital, I can’t go visit them. I don’t wear a mask anymore because I have trouble breathing, but I have to put my hand out and stop people from grabbing me and hugging me. I had done water aerobics for years and loved it, but I can’t do that now because there are too many people in the pool.”
But feeling sorry for herself has never been Dawson’s style, and she refuses to start now. In fact, she’s even found something cancer-related to be grateful for: Her chemo treatments take place only three and a half miles from home.
“I thought I was going to have to drive down to UAB every day,” she said with a note of relief in her voice.
Like any patient with a life-threatening condition, however, Dawson can’t help but wonder why cancer chose her and what the future will hold.
“Breast cancer is something I never thought would happen to me,” she said. “I had always been pretty healthy, and I never missed a mammogram. So, I don’t know why this happened, and I don’t know for sure what my outcome will be, but I’m trusting that God has a plan for me and that it’s a good one.”