When Carol Dawson’s father sent her off to the University of Arkansas in the 1970s, he gave her an extra $1,000. Spending money, he said.

Upon returning home after her freshman year, she was asked about the money. “Gone,” she told her father, who had traveled the world during a military career. “Gone?” he replied, a little astonished. “What did you buy? Clothes?”

Without hesitation, she answered, “No. Pizza.” He was dumbfounded. How could someone eat that much pizza, especially when her meals were included in her university-lodging plan? “Oh, I bought pizza for everyone in the dorm.” That included not only the women who lived on the same floor, but anyone who was hungry and wanted a slice or two.

The days of buying pizza for all in sight might belong to yesteryear, but the personality trait acquired and refined in those college days lives on.

Carol Dawson, a citizen columnist for The Evening News in Jeffersonville, Ind., and its sister paper The Tribune in New Albany, Ind., recently received the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists at the group’s annual convention.

The award recognized a columnist whose work has positively affected readers’ lives and produced tangible benefits for the community.

It’s been said that Rogers, the great philosopher-humorist from Oklahoma, never met a man he didn’t like. The 52-year-old Dawson takes a most similar view toward people. Her column focuses on those behind-the-scenes folk who step forward and do great things quietly for their neighbors and communities. It’s called the “Extra Miler.”

The idea that she would become an award-winning columnist and share the convention’s spotlight in New Orleans with such a big-league star as the Boston Globe’s Ellen Goodman – who received a lifetime achievement award – is as improbable as the notion she’d ever get her own byline.