Rev. John Dawson

I began my career in Pharmacy, with a well-known company, managing and working in Loughborough, Ashby, Nuneaton and Melton Mowbray, before moving to the pharmaceutical industry itself, ending up as a national sales manager in Oncology and Endocrinology with a major French company.

My family and I moved from Loughborough to Worthington, and I joined the Rotary Club of Ashby Hastings around 1988, being elected president in 1998 and later becoming a Paul Harris Fellow.  

Subsequently I moved to Basingstoke three years ago with Val, my wife, a keen Inner Wheel member, to be nearer my family, joining the Rotary Club of Basingstoke Deane, my present club.

My career had met a metamorphosis whilst in Leicestershire, my being enrolled as a priest and vicar in 1995, being made vicar of Breedon on the Hill and three other churches, whilst still working in the commercial world.  I became involved with Mercy Ships, visiting the Anastasis when she was being refitted in Liverpool, becoming a speaker and fund-raiser for this charity.

Later, Rotary supported a Rotary Fellowship Challenge, asking for rotary Volunteers to go overseas on the MercyShip to further the charity’s work.  So, with a group of fellow Rotarians, from all over the country, and different professions, together with our wives, off we went to Freetown, Sierra Leone, helping to build a new wing on a clinic for the local people.  This was both demanding work and a stimulating venture, helping to fill a desperate need in the local community.

Last year, I fulfilled a long-standing wish for a Wing Walk, raising a superb amount of money for Mercy Ships.  Donations were given across the whole country of Rotarians and friends; a worthwhile effort for the principles of Rotary we all adhere to – helping disadvantaged people wherever and whoever they are.