Alice Laota (Robinson) DAVIDSON DOTSON

DOTSON, ROBINSON, DAVIDSON

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 10/21/2016 at 19:01:26

October 22, 1916 ----- October 18, 2016

Funeral services for Alice Laota Dotson, 99, of Spencer, formerly of Langdon, will be conducted at 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, at Langdon Methodist Church in Langdon. Rev. Jan Whiteman will officiate the service. Visitation will take place one hour prior to the service at the Langdon Methodist Church. Interment will take place at Fairview Cemetery in Langdon.

Alice was born on Oct. 22, 1916, in rural Kanawha, Iowa, to Carl and Sadie Robinson. Alice was the seventh of eight children. After graduation from Kanawha High School, Alice received a teaching certificate from Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. Alice began her teaching career in the one-room schoolhouse in Langdon, Iowa. She then taught at Okoboji Consolidated School before accepting a first-grade teaching position in Floyd, Iowa, where she met Lynn Davidson. The two fell in love and were married in Mason City, Iowa, on June 20, 1941. The newlyweds moved to Los Angeles where Lynn worked at Lockheed and Alice did secretarial work. Lynn entered the Air Corps in 1943, and gave his life for our country on Feb. 29, 1944, near Georgetown, British Guiana.

After working as Head Teacher at the federal Nursery School in Van Nuys for a year, Alice moved back to Iowa to continue her full-time teaching career in Clay County and Dickinson County schools for a period that spanned 22 years. Upon retirement Alice continued substitute teaching until the young age of 84. A few years after returning to Iowa, Alice met a charming young entrepreneur named Levon Dotson, who was the owner and proprietor of the Langdon Grocery. Love struck once again, and L.H. and Alice were married June 1, 1952, in Jackson, Minnesota. They settled in Langdon where they lived their entire married lives. They loved to go dancing on Saturday nights, and took special delight in spending an evening at the Clover Club in Langdon.

Alice loved teaching, but most of all she loved her students. She would often relate the stories of the students she had taught and invariably gush with pride at what they had made of themselves. Only one thing could take Alice out of the classroom — her family. She suspended her teaching career to raise three sons: Nyle (Lynn), Kyle (Mickey) and Randy (Laurie), and resumed teaching only after all three were in school. In recent years Alice lavished the same love and devotion on her seven grandchildren, and she was thrilled any time she could recite a nursery rhyme or read a story to one of her nine great-grandchildren.

Alice was very athletic and loved sports. She was involved in several intramural and club sports while attending Morningside. She took up golfing at the age of 70, and she taught her granddaughters to play tennis when she was 80. As a passionate lover of books, Alice belonged to a local book club for many years, and the local library delivered books to her regularly while she resided at Hillside and St. Luke. Alice was a member of the Langdon United Methodist Church and served with the Women’s Society and other church committees. She was also a member of TTT and the Meadow Progressive Club.

Alice passed away quickly and peacefully on Oct. 18, 2016, while residing at St. Luke Lutheran Nursing Home in Spencer, Iowa. She was preceded in death by her seven siblings as well as her husband, Levon, who died in 1998. Alice died four days short of her 100th birthday, but we are sure she would want us to celebrate it anyway! Warner Funeral Home of Spencer is in charge of arrangements.

October 20, 2016
Spencer Daily Reporter --- Spencer, Iowa