Time Machine: Trailblazing journalist becomes big advocate for Camp Courageous

When Dotty Ireland wrote her first prep sports story for The Gazette in 1943, she already had made an impression on the sports editor.

Tait Cummins, who had taken over 'The GI Gazette, Alias Red Peppers” column in 1939, wrote on Nov. 21, 1943: 'This is a memorable issue of the GI, all because the last full impact of war as described so graphically by a certain General William Tecumseh Sherman has befallen the sports department. Scattered around the world are hairy-chested refugees from the sports chain gang who should know that a woman occupies the corner formerly held sacred and apart for the masculine tribe.

The intruder is Miss Dottie (sic) Ireland of Anamosa, possessor of a year of journalism at Iowa U., a knack for sports news and a convertible coupe. She corresponds now with a string of service men about half a mile long and figures that's her contribution to the war effort but if there are any in the GI crowd - civilians barred - who just can't resist the dolly pictured herewith, she can be reached in care of The Gazette. For the benefit of Roy McHugh and others formerly assigned the sports drudgery, she will cover the high schools, etc., during the winter season, and are those coaches happy! The cagers haven't seen her yet.”

The story was accompanied by a two-column photo of Dotty.

Dotty was born Sept. 30, 1924, in Anamosa, where her father was warden at the reformatory. He died when Dotty was 8. She helped out at the family restaurant and graduated from Anamosa High School.

Newspaper, then radio

She attended the University of Iowa for a year before she got a job with The Gazette as assistant sports editor. She told a Gazette reporter in 1993 that her older brother Charles, a newspaperman, forced her to apply.

'I think I was just two weeks past my 19th birthday. Who wants to go to work?” she said. But because of World War II, many of the newspaper staff had gone off to war.

'I don't think I had all that much talent,” she said. When asked about being named assistant editor under Tait, she laughed. 'There were only two people in the department.”

Tait was 17 years older than Dotty. He was a widower with two sons, Cameron and Phillip, when they started dating. After seven years, Dorothy 'Dotty” Lucille Ireland married Lawson 'Tait” Cummins on Aug. 12, 1951.

Dotty said her mother liked Tait but wasn't thrilled to have her daughter marry an older man.

'I always figured I'd rather have 25 to 30 years with the right man than 50 with the wrong one,” Dotty said.

Dotty and Tait moved on from The Gazette to WMT radio in 1947, Tait as a broadcaster and Dotty in the promotion department.

Advocate for the Disabled

Their son, Charlie, was born in 1960. Dotty said that, as a baby, Charlie was lively and active and seemed normal. It wasn't until five years later that doctors determined a 36-hour labor that culminated in a cesarean section had resulted in Charlie being brain-damaged.

Dotty and Tait's struggles with Charlie led to a concern for other families going through the same experiences.

They were approached in 1970 to help a fledgling camp for the disabled.

'They knew we had a (disabled) son,” Dotty said in a 1979 interview with The Gazette, 'and they also figured Tait could help promote it on the radio. What they wanted was Tait's name and what they ended up getting was Tait's wife. Tait's been very helpful, though. But I've ended up much more involved than he is.”

Camp Courageous of Iowa in Monticello, supported entirely by donations and mostly volunteer workers, started as a summer camp in 1973 and later became a year-round facility.

Dotty was one of the first members of the camp board of directors and served the organization as its president. She took hundreds of pictures and wrote stories for the camp's newsletter. She also was president of Linn County ARC.

'Each of us is more alike than we are different,” a phrase Dotty coined, became a slogan associated with Camp Courageous.

After the first six years of promoting the camp, Dotty estimated she had traveled more than 75,000 miles across the state and had spoken to more than 500 groups.

Dotty took a new young camp director, Charlie Becker, under her wing when he was hired in 1980. She taught him to do the newsletter and related a lot of information about the organization.

At an awards ceremony that year, Tait and Dotty were the first couple to receive the B'nai B'rith Humanitarian of the Year Award. Gary Goldstein wrote in a speech for the ceremony, 'Tait and Dotty have a profoundly handicapped son, Charlie. This experience has energized them to assist and give courage to other parents of handicapped children. ... Tait and Dotty have donated all their time and have encouraged others to do the same.”

Camp Courageous Grows

Dotty's lively sense of humor and dedication to the camp kept her busy.

'I'm not a great do-gooder,” she once said. 'In fact, I'd like to get out of some of this. But I can't. It has to be done. Maybe after a few more years of this, I'll just be naughty for two or three years to even things out.”

But neither Tait, who died in 1984, nor Dotty ever retired from their work with Camp Courageous.

At the time of Dotty's death in 1997, the camp had grown from serving 200 disabled children to more than 3,600 youths and adults each year.

Becker told an interviewer, 'I think Dotty was very, very key to the success of Camp Courageous. I think she was an inspiration to a lot of people with similar children.”