CBS reporter injured in Iraq tells graduating seniors to persevere

“When someone tells you you’re going the wrong way, you listen to your inside, that inner-compass,” Dozier told 35 graduates, all dressed in white gowns and carrying ivory bouquets with blue ribbons, at St. Timothy’s School in Stevenson, a boarding and day school for girls grades nine through 12.

Doctors doubted Dozier, a 1984 graduate, would ever walk properly again.

“I thought to myself, ‘I’ve heard that before,’” she said.

People told the Baltimore native “no” when she aspired to be a foreign correspondent, citing her lack of experience.

She heard “no” again when others dismissed her looks as not worthy of TV.

But Dozier never gave up.

She worked an internship reporting in Israel, put in years at a D.C. newsletter and used a grant to write from Egypt before landing a beat covering the Middle East for CBS Evening News.

But her dream slipped into a nightmare on Memorial Day of last year.

While reporting a story in Baghdad about the U.S. military working with Iraqi soldiers, insurgents used a car bomb to attack Dozier, cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan.

Douglas, Brolan and 4th Infantry Division Capt. James Funkhouser, the U.S. Army captain they followed, and his Iraqi translator, were killed.

Dozier endured three painful months in the hospital, at first unsure that her right leg would be saved.

Today, not only does she walk on her own two feet, but she recently started running again— thanks in part from the letters she received from St. Timothy’s students and faculty, she said.

“I went so far, so fast, and it was partly because I am as stubborn as anyone on the planet, which I advise you all to be,” Dozier told the graduates. “But you’re part of the reason I recovered so fast.”

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com