Marian Dozier
Marian Dozier, a former reporter for the Detroit Free Press, who went on to work in government, and eventually launched an online jewelry store out of West Palm Beach, Fla., died Friday. She was 61.
The family said she had been suffering from dementia, similar to TV personality Wendy Williams.
Dozier, a native of southern Flordia, worked at the Detroit Free Press from 1989 to 1998, where she covered a variety of subjects including cultural affairs in Oakland County, which was increasingly becoming a diverse county.
"I chronicled those changes," she wrotes on her Linkedin page.
"Before going to Oakland County, I wrote a front-page story about the growth in the ethnicity seen in Christmas decorations. I told the story through an elderly Black woman who, for decades, had been painting her Santas black herself. The article went national, in part, because of how the woman responded when she learned Target, K-Mart and other large American retailers were now selling items like Black Santas in their stores.
"After Oakland County, I served a period on the award-winning investigative team 'Children First!'--which saw senior staff seeking to tell social-issue stories about children with the focus on solutions, not just on problems."
"She was a great reporter and journalist," said friend, Adolph Mongo, a political commentator and host of the podcast, Detroit in Black and White. "She loved living in Detroit."
He said she went on strike in 1995 and returned to the newsroom after the unions agreed to. But he said the Freep punished her, like some other strikers, and made it difficult for her to remain at the paper.
"She didn't want leave Detroit," Mongo said, adding that she didn't like the way the paper was treating her, so she returned to Florida in 1998. She became a senior writer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel where her primary beat was the 'news of religion'--not theology."
"I also worked on teams with other senior staff writers to cover the major news of the day," she wrote on LinkedIn. "Indeed, while on the team covering the Bush-Gore race in 2000 in Palm Beach County, for example, I wrote a front-page article about 'chads'--that quickly went national--introducing 'hanging chad' into the then-everyday American lexicon. This was also the period when the Catholic Church diocese in the area had some uncomfortable issues to deal with; that too was my story."
Dozier eventually left journalism.
From 2007 to 2015, she worked as a legislative aide to the City Council for the city of Riviera Beach, Fla.
From 2016 to 2019, Dozier worked as a legislative assisant for Florida State Sen. Bobby Powell.
In 2016, she launched Mother Earth Artwear & Jewelry, an online jewelry store.
On Linkedin, she wrote:
"Mother Earth is back! When I lived in Detroit, working as a reporter at the Detroit Free Press, I also owned a jewelry store in Trapper's Alley in Greektown called Mother Earth. Handmade, hippie, ethnic jewelry and handicrafts were its stock in trade and I have returned to same. The only difference? Mother Earth is online. Visit www.ShopMotherEarth.net after July 1, 2016.
She is survived by daughter Jada Brown-Thompson (Jerome Thompson) and grandchildren, Jaiden and Jerome Thompson, sister Renee Dozier, her father Nelson Dozier and mother, Jeri Holcomb, and a whole host of loving family and friends.
