John Dawson Jr.

Portrait of John Dawson, Jr. by way of Richland Source. 

John E. Dawson Jr. passed away on April 8, 2020 after contracting COVID-19 while working as a corrections officer at the Marion Correctional Institution. A graduate of Ashland High School and a lifelong Ohio resident, John had been employed at Marion since 1996. He was only fifty-five years old when he died. 

John’s friends and acquaintances remember him as someone who would “light up the room” wherever he went. “If you wanted a laugh, all you had to do was go talk to him, and he would make you laugh,” said Brian Miller, one of his colleagues at Marion, to the Marion Star. Other coworkers recalled conversations about college football and jokes that would lift their spirits. “He was the life of the second shift,” Robert Morgan wrote on his memorial page. 

When he wasn’t working shifts at Marion, John loved to ride horses and play baseball. He was a devoted father to his two daughters, Ashley and Danielle, and an affectionate grandfather to his four grandchildren, A’Marie, Ada, Avery, and John. On the weekends, he would take his grandchildren to fly kites at the local park, or to visit horses at the farm where his father had been a well-known saddlebred trainer. 

As one of the first coronavirus fatalities in the Ohio prison system, John’s death prompted Governor Mike DeWine to implement stricter hygiene regulations in correctional facilities across the state. But for John and the thirteen others at Marion who also passed away from the coronavirus, the measures came far too late. We mourn the loss of John and honor the memory of a life brightly lived, with gratitude for the warmth and kindness he brought into this world.

This memorial was written by MOL team member Mirilla Zhu with information from reporting by Sarah Volpenhein of The Mansfield News Journal.