Frances Manning Chambers Dawson, 82, departed this life on January 27, 2025.
A service to celebrate the life of Frances Manning Chambers Dawson will be held at 10:00 a.m., Saturday, February 8, 2025, at Scottsboro Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Visitation will be held the evening before from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., Friday, February 7, 2025, at Scottsboro Funeral Home.
Mrs. Dawson was born June 4, 1942, in Athens, Alabama. Her parents were James Wellington Chambers, Jr., and Martha Manning Chambers.
She attended Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida from September 1959 to June 1960, before entering Athens College (now Athens University) in Athens, Alabama, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in June 1963. In September 1963, she was admitted to the graduate school of the University of Miami. From September 1964 to March 1965, she spent long periods in the Everglades studying parasites in sunfish which became the subject of her master’s thesis. She was granted the degree of Master of Science from the University on June 8, 1965.
She then returned to Athens and held an associate professorship in biology at Athens College where she met her husband of more than 57 years, Charles Cook Dawson, Sr. While Charles was in law school in Birmingham, Alabama, she worked at University Hospital in various positions including the pathology lab. The Dawsons came to Scottsboro in 1969, where Charles practiced law for 50 years.
She was best known as a piano instructor, organ and piano accompanist at various churches and groups, and office manager in her husband’s law office. She was a member of the Scottsboro Music Study Club. A voracious reader, she completed advanced foreign language (including several terms of classical Greek) and international cultural studies during summer programs at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.
Mrs. Dawson was, for a number of years, the guiding force behind many of the social aspects of the Jackson County Bar, serving as its treasurer and secretary and first non-lawyer ever named to those positions. She also was the Stated Clerk of the Robert Donnell Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church for many years, a position which she performed with great care and from which she derived even greater joy. She devoted herself to supporting her husband’s civic activities, including The Gideons International, Kiwanis International (where she routinely sold the most pancake breakfast tickets year-after-year), and the Boy Scouts of America.
Her love of all animals was well-known, but cats were first in her heart among the animal kingdom. She particularly delighted in christening them with great names – literary, classical and biblical – such as Dorian Gray, Agamemnon, Antigone and Manoah.
She is survived by her husband, Charles Cook Dawson, Sr.; her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter; one sister, Gene Chambers (Mrs. F. Joseph) Hayes of Englewood, Colorado; one brother, James Wellington “Jim” Chambers, III, and his wife Merewyn Macy Chambers of Louisville, Kentucky; a nephew; three nieces; two grand-nieces and two grand-nephews; and many other family members and friends.
Mrs. Dawson was preceded in death by her parents and by her stepfather, Marvin Wooten Stuart, who married her mother after her father’s death in 1958.
Her family wish to express their deepest gratitude to her caregivers at Cloverdale Nursing and Rehabilitation, Highlands Medical Center and Southern Care/New Beacon Hospice for their tireless, expert and compassionate care over the last months.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Robert Donnell Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church at P O Box 1097, Trussville, AL 35173, The Gideon’s International at https://www.gideons.org/donate or to Southern Care/New Beacon Hospice.
