William Trowbridge Dawson, as adolescent actor "Billy Dawson," made his debut in the 1940 film "A Dispatch From Reuters" with Eddie Arnold. He followed with roles in "Knute Rockne--All American," "Remember the Day" with Claudette Colbert. and "The Major and the Minor" with Ginger Rogers in 1942. Among his other films was "Lady in the Dark" in 1944, the year he ended his acting career.
After serving in World War II, Dawson went into banking. By 1963, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of the independent National Bank of Commerce, which he sold two years later. Dawson then served as president of the Hollywood advertising agency Holzer, Taylor, McTighe & Dawson and from 1967 to 1969 was Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Golden West Airlines.
In 1969, he founded Dawson Development Co., headquartered in Seal Beach, California and launched the $100-million waterfront Marina Pacifica--a development of condominiums, a shopping center and boat slips at the Long Beach Marina.
After developing the Seal Beach Trailer Park, he formed AFCOM (for "affordable communities") in 1977. With that company, he developed Sunnycove, a section of affordable single-family homes in the core of economically stressed Compton.
With AFCOM, Dawson also built a mobile home park in Palm Springs for the relocation of 550 families evicted from five trailer parks there, additional housing tracts in Compton and modestly-priced apartment and condominium projects in south Orange County.
