Bob Dotson was born into farming. He still owns the 190 acres and the home he grew up in, as well as two other land parcels of 80 and 20 acres, where he keeps approximately 50 cows. He has a mixed breed herd of mostly black Angus. He also puts up 400 bales of hay each year.
“I’ve been doing this all my life,” he said with a smile. He and his wife, Judy, own 80 acres near the Gasconade River in eastern Laclede County. “I came to law enforcement after four years in the Navy. I joined the Lebanon Police Department around 1964 and worked as a police officer for 22 years.”
That career led to a run for sheriff in 1988. Bob Dotson has the distinction of being one of only three sheriffs in the history of the Laclede County Sheriff’s office beginning in 1849, to serve three back-to-back terms for a total of 12 years.
“I worked the night shift at the police department for years, and worked cows and cut hay in the day time to make ends meet.”
A great many Ozarks farmers have worked another job over the years to keep farming, but Bob turned that around. “I knew after my years in the Navy, I didn’t want to leave home anymore,” he grinned. “All that water around a ship and all I could think about was the green pastures I was missing, so I found a way to make it work so I could stay home and still do the work I wanted to do.”
Bob also found the farm served as his retreat when the pressure of being the county’s chief law enforcement officer got to be too much. “It was a few years after I took office that meth hit this county and all of this part of the country, really hard. It could all get to be a pretty heavy load at times. I saw a lot of changes in law enforcement across the years I was there, especially those last 12 years as sheriff.”
Even so, Sheriff Bob Dotson was known as a man who was always willing to talk to his constituents and help in any way he could. “You’d get people who would complain about the time spent in coffee shops, talking with folks, but I could get more information there, on what was really going on in this county, who was in trouble, who really needed help, who was involved in what, than hours spent anywhere else. People were willing to talk if they were some place they felt safe.”
Bob and Judy’s family includes their son, Andy, who just began his first full-time job at a Kansas City area financial company after completing his Bachelors and Masters degrees at Central Missouri State University. Bob’s oldest son, Keith, works for Laclede Electric Cooperative and his daughter, Bobbie, has a photography business after working as a school teacher for several years. He also has five granddaughters and two great-grandsons. He freely admits that none of his children are interested in keeping the family farming tradition going.
“They alI went to school and are now smarter than me. I find myself in a strange position these days with the whole family,” he admitted as he shook his head. “My mother is 95, my oldest son is 48 and my youngest son is 23. I’m standing with four generations and so much has changed for each one of us over the years. For these younger kids, it’s all about the cell phones and computers and I don’t even know how to turn one of the silly things on. My mother can’t even imagine such a thing. It’s like we each speak a different language, from our own time.”
“Still, if you want to talk tractors, I’m ready,” he concluded with a laugh.
