It`s not every day that a flower is named in your honor. But it could happen if, like Elmhurst`s Vi Dawson, you are willing to devote 30-plus years to your hobby, including a decade-long climb to national office before finally achieving the country`s highest garden club post.
For Dawson, that day arrived in May, when she was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the National Council of State Garden Clubs, presiding over nearly 300,000 garden club members in more than 9,300 local clubs across the nation. Dawson is the first National Council president from Illinois in more than 50 years.
In recognition of Dawson`s efforts, three hybrids of flowers have been named: two varieties of Vi Dawson roses and the Violet Dawson peony. And why not? For Dawson, everything is coming up roses.
The new president was also presented with a five-inch thick book signed by the nearly 9,000 members of Illinois` garden clubs, including 1,200 who reside in Du Page County.
The four Dawson children commissioned a watercolor of violets, commemorating their mother`s achievement. Dawson also received the National Council president`s medallion, encrusted with diamonds and representing the club`s eight national regions. And there were even more testimonials and keepsakes marking her installation.
Dawson will just have to get used to these tributes, which, say her friends and collegues, are well deserved.
”The one who really needs a medal is Vi Dawson. She took 32 years to get there,” said fellow Elmhurst Garden Club member Anna Wildermuth, who attended the recent inauguration dinner.
”The (installation) ceremony is very emotional, almost like the Academy Awards,” said Wildermuth. ”Vi`s speech was wonderful. Her family was all there. But her emotions were intact, like she had planned this for years. She`s been very dedicated and she`s worked very hard for it.”
Joining in the praise for Dawson were First Lady Barbara Bush, who sent a warm congratulatory letter extolling the lessons of patience and perseverance learned in the garden, and Illinois Gov. James Edgar.
Dawson, who first joined the Elmhurst Garden Club in 1958, was sworn-in as president in early May during ceremonies attended by more than 1,000 at the National Council of State Garden Club`s national convention in Milwaukee.
Thanks to Illinois` delegation, the ceremonies were awash in violets, which represented both violet, the state flower, and Violet, the new president. The 200 members attending from Illinois presented each guest with a basket of violets.
A busload from Dawson`s own Elmhurst Garden Club wore special violet nosegays.
”The Elmhurst Garden Club was identified as her garden club,” said club member and friend Virginia Knuepfer, who along with husband Jack, former Du Page County Board chairman, shared a table at the convention with Dawson and her family. ”She`s very sweet. She always promotes the fact that she is an Elmhurst Garden Club member. She has put it on the map, and she has never let anyone forget Elmhurst.”
Within a few days of becoming president, Dawson attended another convention in Kansas City and barely caught her breath back home in Elmhurst before heading off to Boston. Her schedule was so full, she had to leave her massive dining room table loaded with unopened gifts from well-wishers.
”I tell you, it`s going to be wild,” Dawson said last month of her whirlwind schedule. ”And I`ve only been president seven days!”
Dawson will surely accumulate some frequent flier miles in the coming months. During her two-year term in the unpaid position, she is expected to visit every state for a wide range of gardening conventions, regional governing meetings and other special events.
The National Council of State Garden Clubs has a board of about 200 who will work with Dawson as well as the individual state presidents. In addition, another 220 international organizations from Africa to New Zealand are affiliated with the group.
This week, which the council has proclaimed National Garden Week, Dawson will travel to the United Nations in New York City for a global environmental conference. Joining her on the panel will be winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and cable television mogul Ted Turner, among others.
”I`m shivering, it`s so exciting,” she said. ”You almost have to pull me down.”
To Dawson, it`s a dream come true, albeit an overwhelming one.
To reach this pinnacle in the garden club, Dawson spent the past decade working through a series of elected posts.
”Coming up, for 10 years, you`re so busy,” said Dawson. ”I didn`t realize it was this awesome.”
But it was all worthwhile, according to the new president. ”It is a very slight chance that you become a national president. The timing has to be right,” she said. ”It involves what you have done at the national level and what you have done in your local club.”
Despite her title, Dawson describes herself as foremost ”a grassroots gardener.”
Longtime associates describe her with words like ”genteel,”
”gracious” and ”extremely thoughtful.” During a recent conversation in her historic Elmhurst home, she was soft-spoken and armed with a warm, ready smile.
It was in this home that she and her husband, Jim, a retired food broker, raised their family. On this morning, however, Dawson`s thoughts are on the role ahead of her.
To underscore her theme for the next two years, ”It`s Our World to Garden,” Dawson pulls out a jacket and matching tote bag covered with maps of the world. Her message brings together global influence and the love of gardening as she explains, ”You can start with your home garden and then branch out into the community, into the state, region, on a national scale and now international.”
Dawson points out that the garden club`s basic objective, to teach appreciation of Mother Earth, has changed little in its 62-year history but now is clearly in synch with the times. It is the largest gardening organization in the world.
”We have some members who are strong environmentalists,” says Dawson,
”but all of us are conservation minded and preservation minded.”
The National Council will initiate new environmental course work under Dawson`s tenure. The organization already sponsors similar programs in landscape design, garden study and flower shows.
Dawson`s agenda also includes a major conference next fall on energy, economy and the environment, which will be underwritten by Shell Oil Co. A project for 1992 will be the international floral and garden exhibition, the first in the U.S., scheduled in conjunction with the 500th anniversary of Columbus` voyage to the New World, to be held in Columbus, Ohio.
Youth activities are high on Dawson`s list as well, with the garden clubs sponsoring a pen pal program and continuing scholarship awards. In the past year, $536,625 in college scholarship money has gone to young adults pursuing horticultural or garden science-related fields.
Of course all of this doesn`t leave much time for gardening.
”Every national president has said it, `My garden will suffer,` ” says Dawson, sighing. ”But I always try to get out into the yard.”
Even with little time for her garden these days, it`s hard to break old habits. Dawson admits her gardening habit, or more precisely her gardening passion, was sown when she first moved to Elmhurst in 1956.
”I had to wait a year and a half to join the Elmhurst Garden Club because they had a waiting list of 250.”
Dawson says her first introduction to planting seeds was through a zinnia competition. ”I took care of those zinnias like they were little children.” When Dawson`s green thumb earned the blue ribbon for zinnias, a hobby bloomed.
Several years later, husband Jim became ill and was frequently hospitalized. ”My patio garden was a saving grace because when I would visit Jim in the hospital every day, I`d come home to the children. Then I`d go out to the patio garden and work there for about an hour,” Dawson says.
”It got me tired. When I went to bed, I slept. Working in my garden was like therapy. To this day that`s something very important to me.”
As time went by, Dawson grew more involved with the garden club organization, promoting youth gardening programs, opportunities for nursing home patients and helping the city of Elmhurst with beautification efforts. Dawson first became Elmhurst Garden Club president in 1968 and in 1975, the Illinois president.
Not surprisingly, when Dawson was asked to serve as the National Council recording secretary, she obliged and began to build a national reputation. Although she modestly insists she has succeeded only with the help of her club, in 1981 she started up the rungs of national office, culminating in her current position as president.
Jim Dawson says he is not surprised by his wife`s success.
”That was what interested her and she was happy doing it,” he said.
”She`s dedicated to the program. She thinks they do a lot of good. Naturally I would support it 100 percent, as she would me.”
Dawson said all of this ”just happened,” but others argue that`s hardly a fair representation.
”I can remember times when Vi would come back from a convention as perhaps a secretary or a chairman of a committee. She would stay up all night typing everything so that it would be all done first thing in the morning for the next business session,” Knuepfer said. ”It didn`t just happen.”
The club`s state horticultural chairman, Mary Walker of Woodstock, agreed: ”What brings her to this is the willingness to make the effort that is required. Financially it`s expensive. In time, it is just unbelieveable, and then there is the energy that goes into achieving a goal like that. It takes tremendous determination in something that you truly want to do.
”Illinois owes her a great debt for being willing to do all this. While it is an honor to her, at the same time it`s an honor to the state and the garden clubs of Illinois to have a national president.”
Dawson`s competitive streak shouldn`t come as a surprise to those who are familiar with her children. Both sons, Jim and Jeff, were outstanding basketball players. In 1967, Jim was named the MVP of the Big 10 conference after a stellar career at the University of Illinois. Jeff too, was an Illinois starter. Daughters Susan and Diane were also achievers and now each has her own business.
If the garden club has an image of silver-haired ladies arranging flowers, perhaps Dawson, with both her gentle manner and her ambitious drive, is a good representative for today`s garden club.
As Mildred Hartney of the Elmhurst Garden Club put it, ”She`s a very ladylike lady. But in her quiet way, Vi makes an impact.”
Garden club members gave up white gloves and hats at club tea parties some time ago. Longtime garden club member Lois Robins, who joined the Elmhurst group in 1950, sees a significant change. ”There are so many pursuits that are present today that weren`t so important years ago, and of course ecology and the environment are top scorers,” she said.
But the organization is hurt, as are many women`s clubs, by today`s working women and their busy lifestyles. Enrollment in the National Council was once nearly a half-million, and waiting lists to join were not unusual. But even today, meetings are generally held in the daytime, and some ongoing traditions, such as referring to members by their husbands` first names, are considered outdated by a younger generation of women.
The clubs hope to recover, however.
”I think they`re on the upswing. There`s so much more interest in gardening now,” Walker said. ”It`s the thing to do, and Americans think that whatever is the thing, well, they want to be a part of it.”
As president, Dawson will try to encourage some changes for the better. She admits she is concerned about attracting new members. ”We all agree we absolutely have to change,” she said.
Blazing new trails, however, is familiar territory to Dawson, who was the first woman elected PTA president in her children`s elementary school.
And while official National Council publications list her as Mrs. James Dawson, she certainly is known to the group as Violet. And it`s a name that suits her in every sense.
”I was supposed to be named Patricia,” Dawson said. ”But my mother had a friend who said, `That`s such a common name. Why don`t you name her something beautiful, like Violet.`
”Now it suits me just fine.”
