Positivity: Cancer survivor to donate spec home profits to charity
01/14/07
BILLINGS (AP) — Nearly 11 years ago, Jim Dawson was battling cancer.
Now the Billings man is healthy, the owner of a construction company and grateful for all he has been given. And he’s giving back.
Dawson, who owns Dawson Builders Inc., is building a spec home in the Billings Heights with mostly donated materials and labor. When the house is sold for what Dawson hopes will be in the $170,000 range, he plans to donate all of the profits — $80,000 to $100,00 — to Provision International.
‘‘My reason for doing it is because I’ve been blessed over the last 10 years, since coming off my death bed,’’ Dawson said, sitting in a makeshift office in another of the homes he’s built.
Dawson considers his healing from Hodgkin’s lymphoma a miracle. He discovered he had the deadly disease in January 1996.
‘‘I was cured probably about the first of March that same year,’’ Dawson said, ‘‘and I have the X-rays to prove it.’’
He underwent 100 radiation treatments through May of that year. After the first 50, the cancer had disappeared.
Dawson’s physician wouldn’t go so far as saying the healing was a miracle. But he did write a letter saying the cancer disappeared ‘‘amazingly rapidly,’’ Dawson said. ‘‘He said ‘your body is really responding to our treatment.’ â€
Dawson is convinced God intervened and healed him. And it was when he was recovering from cancer that the idea started to form in his mind that he wanted to be a blessing to someone else.
In 1997, he went back into the house-building business. Now Dawson is doing well, with a number of his homes under construction in the High Sierra Subdivision, behind Skyview High, and more under way in the Eagle Ridge Subdivision, just off the corner of Wicks Lane and St. Andrews Place.
He never forgot his idea to repay the blessings he had received. Dawson knew of Dick Larson — Larson used to work as a state building inspector though the two had never worked together.
A friend of Dawson’s told him about Larson’s international ministry of collecting medical equipment and sending it overseas.
‘‘That’s about all I knew,’’ Dawson said.
Then, a couple of years ago, the two met through mutual friends and got to talking. They chatted several times over coffee and lunch, and, the more Dawson heard, the more he knew he had found the ministry he wanted to help.
‘‘It was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for — Montana-based and a low overhead so the vast majority of money goes right to the work they’re doing,’’ he said. ‘‘And the person at the head of that organization is 100-percent genuine and on fire about what he’s doing.’’
Last spring Dawson shared his idea of blessing the ministry with Larson, ‘‘which floored him — he couldn’t believe it,’’ Dawson said.
The builder decided to use a lot he had owned for about six years. He approached subcontractors and suppliers with whom he had worked and asked them to consider donating their time, talents and materials to the project.
‘‘I let them know what I was doing and let them do what they wanted,’’ Dawson said. ‘‘It’s been amazing how many people jumped on board.’’
To date, nearly $65,000 has been donated in the lot, the material and labor ‘‘and we’re not finished yet,’’ he said.
The house is well on its way to being completed. The split-level south-facing dwelling is fully enclosed, and work is being completed on the interior.
The house, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, has 1,217 square feet on the main floor and 1,130 square feet in the unfinished basement. It also includes vaulted ceilings and a 14-foot bay window in the living room.
Dawson expects the house will be completed in two to three months. Once it’s sold, all of the money made from the sale will go to Provision International. …..
