Former Moses Lake teacher influenced many lives

MOSES LAKE — Hazel Dozier taught English and Spanish to students at Chief Moses Junior High and Frontier Junior High, but she illuminated kids on more than that.

Hazel – Mrs. Dozier to the kids at school – died Oct. 15 at 95 years of age.

Writing on social media when her son Dwight Dozier announced her death, her former student Rich Victor remembered getting in a fight in a hallway at Chief Moses. Or almost getting into a fight, since Mrs. Dozier had something to say about it.

“She heard the commotion, came out and defused the situation with her unbelievable style,” he wrote.

Hazel’s daughter Shelly Dozier-McKee, and many of her students, remembered her tip for distinguishing between the spelling of “desert” and “dessert.”

It’s that extra “S” – you only want to cross the desert once, but you want dessert twice, Mrs. Dozier used to say.

And the word “par,” MaryAnn Garcia Hogaboam remembered, “as she showed us how to swing a golf club.”

“I can never spell ‘separate’ without thinking of her,” Hogaboam said.

“Many of her students talked about the influence she had,” Dozier-McKee said.

Friends would come over to play, Dwight remembered, and when they were taking a break Mrs. Dozier might just hand out an English worksheet. Kids never, ever said they were bored at the Dozier house, because they were liable to find themselves with some schoolwork, he said.

“She was a great mom,” Dozier-McKee said.

Hazel and her husband Sylvester Dozier Jr., encouraged their two children to experiment and explore, whether it was music or sports or 4H projects.

“There was nothing our parents didn’t allow us to try,” Dozier-McKee said.

There were things the Dozier kids weren’t allowed to do, like use the word “stupid.” Or “fool.”

“She would say, ‘that’s not part of your vocabulary,’” Dozier-McKee said.

And her kids did not ask where the broom was at. A sentence does not end that way, she added.

Hazel Dozier was born in Oklahoma in 1925, a time and place where kids went to segregated schools.

“She was very, very proud of her African-American heritage,” Dwight said. “And tried to educate people about that heritage. Every year she would help set up the Black History Month display at the Moses Lake Public Library.”

“A challenging time,” Dwight said of Oklahoma in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

And it wasn’t just Oklahoma. During World War II, a teenage Hazel headed north with a friend to work in the shipyards in Portland to earn money for college, he said. At one stop along the way, Hazel was told she’d have to eat outside, while her lighter-skinned friend, thought to be white, was allowed inside.

Hazel later graduated from Langston University with a degree in English and French, and a lifelong love of poetry and literature. She had a teaching job at a junior high – a segregated junior high – in Oklahoma City when she was summoned to the principal’s office.

The principal had a proposal. Oklahoma City was opening its first integrated junior high, and the principal thought Hazel should join the new school’s staff.

“She asked, ‘Why me?’ And the principal said, ‘Why not you?’” Dozier-McKee said.

Hazel was the school’s first African-American teacher, she added.

The Dozier family moved to Moses Lake in 1969, when Sylvester Dozier became director of the Columbia Basin Job Corps Center.

“We had a very diverse group of friends,” Dozier-McKee remembered.

The Dozier children remembered Moses Lake as a place where they were just one of the kids.

“I personally never felt any racial tension,” Dwight said, although they knew tension and prejudice existed.

Sylvester and Hazel Dozier were professionals with professional careers.

“They interacted with all kinds of people,” Dozier-McKee said. “People would look at us more as individuals.

Moses Lake had a pretty diverse population in the 1970s, with a sizable Hispanic population and Japanese that worked and trained at the Japan Airlines facility. And, Hazel had students from Japan and kept in touch with some of them her entire life, Dwight said.

She stayed in Moses Lake after retiring from teaching, and eventually moved back to her hometown in Oklahoma. She was very independent, Dwight said, living alone and driving until she was about 90 years of age. Eventually, she joined her children, who both live in Atlanta.

Hazel was a resident of an assisted living facility at the time the coronavirus outbreak started, and her family wasn’t allowed to see her.

She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January, Dwight said, and under the circumstances, he purchased a home so they could live in the same house. Her kids were able to take care of her like she took care of them, he said.

But Hazel always remembered Moses Lake fondly, her children said.

“She left her heart in Moses Lake,” Shelly said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.