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You Can Go Home Again Dawn Southwell returns home to build future, improve community By Joel Williams with Chuck McCollough
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YOU MAY HAVE SEEN DAWN Southwell at the Schertz Jubilee over the Fourth of July weekend. Or it may have been the Homes for Pets Wilenchik Memorial Doggie Dash in May. Or maybe some other community festival. Or was it a business expo or something else involving the Schertz Chamber of Commerce? Southwell, 27, can be found at many Schertz community events, and she’s not there just because of her job as community relations representative for the Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative. She really enjoys getting involved in the community where she grew up. The 2002 Clemens High School graduate learned to appreciate Schertz even more after going away to college at Howard Payne University in Brownwood. She played basketball there, which is not a surprise, given her height of six feet. Southwell then came home and finished her degree in communications with a public relations emphasis at the University of Texas at San Antonio while working at GVEC. Initially, Southwell started at GVEC in customer service, then moved into the marketing department and later received a promotion to the community relations position. After settling in Schertz, she became committed to strengthening the sense of community in a city where many residents work elsewhere. “Now that I’m here, I realize how great it is here,” said Southwell, whose husband, Mark, also is from Schertz and graduated from Clemens. “I wanted to be part of the community, get involved and volunteer at community events, not just live in it.”
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Dawn and Mark Southwell represent a growing trend in Schertz of young adults, single and married, returning home to become the next generation of community and civic builders and leaders. The Southwells got a jump on building their dream in Schertz when they purchased a small fixer-upper house in an established neighbor in March 2007. Four years later, the fixing up is done, and the house is a showcase of creativity and extended family effort. “For the first two months, we didn’t move in because we worked on the house,” Dawn Southwell said, adding that her in-laws, Mark and Jill Southwell, really pitched in. “My father-in-law is very handy with tools and helped tremendously with things like flooring and also finishing and trimming work,” she said. “In fact, Mark and I learned a lot from his dad about how to renovate a house. Right after we bought the house, we spent almost every night and weekends for that first two months working on the house. It became a family affair. More than once, we ate pizza while sitting on the floor in the unfinished kitchen with the cabinets pulled out.” Dawn Southwell credits her mother-in-law with helping to decorate the inside of the house to reflect the taste of the 20-something owners. “Most people are surprised when they walk into the house and see it looks different from what they might have seen in other houses in the neighborhood,” she said. Southwell thinks it is nice to have family members in the same city, including her mom and dad, Sharon and Gerald
Haecker, and sister, Nichole. Her mom owns a hair salon in Selma, and her dad is a senior project manager for Walker Engineering, an electrical engineering firm. Southwell’s brother, Justin, lives in Houston. One reason Southwell moved back to Schertz was because there was going to be a new addition to the family -- a baby sister. “I decided to come back and experience that event with my mom and my family,” she explained. “I also missed the small town feel
with the big city amenities all around it. My sister is now seven years old and the third sibling in my family to go through the local school system. Having a sister that age gave me a chance to develop parenting skills when I helped take care of her when she was little.” She believes her parents have been incredible role models. “Mom and dad set such a good example in many ways,” Southwell said. “They instilled a work ethic in me that has helped my career and life overall. And they have a great marriage that inspires me and Mark.”
Dawn and Mark Southwell like the location of their house, which is within walking distance of the Schertz Family YMCA, Schertz Area Public Library and a number of other businesses, including the local GVEC office and Handy Andy. But the young couple is looking to sell their former fixer-upper and move to another house in the future. “We want to start at family and will need a bigger house,” she said. “The next house we get, we are going
to live in for a long time.” She devotes much of her community involvement to the Schertz Chamber of Commerce, which her employer helps sponsor. Southwell’s presence in the Chamber Ambassadors provides opportunities to participate in Chamber member events, such as groundbreaking ceremonies, ribbon-cuttings and other activities. Back in May, the Ambassador group held a mixer aimed at recruiting more Ambassadors and signed on several new members at that event.
The GVEC job also gets Southwell out into the Schertz community and elsewhere in the region, where she may speak on a range of topics, including energy conservation and safety. “I really like my job,” she said. “I feel really fortunate that I wake up every morning and do something I love.” She especially likes working with local schools and draws on her own experience in the same school system for ideas.
In her spare time, Southwell and her husband enjoy hunting, water sports, playing volleyball, cooking and caring for their two dogs, boxers named Bella and Maximus. The couple enjoys living in a city with a hometown feel, but also with the conveniences of an urban area. “I want to have a family and raise them here,” she said. “And I want to make sure that Schertz is always a nice community, a familyfriendly place.”
October 2011 SCHERTZMAGAZINE.COM
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