Anthony Michael Dawson

Anthony Michael “Mike” Dawson Jr. was born November 30, 1935, in Baltimore, MD, and died September 8, 2018, in Metairie, LA. His parents were Anthony Michael Dawson and Nancy Virginia Burdette. He spent his early years in St. Paul, MN, before the family moved to Indianapolis, IN. He is survived by his wife Margaret Grantham Dawson.

Mike received a BS in statistics from Purdue University before moving to Santa Monica, CA, where he took a job with Douglas Aircraft. After a two-year assignment in England, he returned to California.

A job at the NASA Michoud facility helping build the Saturn booster for the Apollo project brought him to the New Orleans area in 1963. He later worked for Blumenthal Print Works, where he retired as vice president of operations in 2005 after 30 years of employment.

Mike always loved singing. In college he sang with the Purdue Glee Club, and he sang in numerous church choirs, as well as other choirs such as the New Orleans Symphony and Delgado Community College choruses. One of his favorite concerts was one that he did with the Symphony Chorus at Carnegie Hall in New York City. He studied voice at Delgado for over 20 years.

He was a devout member of the Episcopal Church and sang in the choirs at St. Martin Episcopal Church and St. Philips Episcopal Church and served on the vestry at the latter.

He taught math at Delgado and enjoyed working out. He received his MBA from Tulane in 1975. He and Maggie enjoyed dancing and traveling, taking trips to Hawaii, Sedona, England, and Austria among others.

He will be lovingly remembered by his wife of 30 years, Maggie, his children by his first wife (Evelyn Houghton): Elizabeth (Dale) Pontiff, Lynn (Steven Roth) Dawson, Suzanne (Jack) Alley, Thomas (Gay) Dawson, Alice (Daniel) Greene and his grandchildren Theresa Pontiff; Peter, Michael, and Cole Alley; Cooper and Cameron Greene; and his goddaughter Jennifer (Joe) Woodard Borzilleri and her daughter Elizabeth.

The funeral service will be at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Metairie, 2216 Metairie Road, on Saturday, September 15th, at 11:00 am; visitation begins at 10:00 am. A reception at the church will follow the service. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Metairie (www.stmepiscopal.com/) or the New Orleans Symphony Chorus (www.symphonychorus.org).