Tony Dunson is pictured with his daughter, MacKenzie, in the storefront of his Nevada-based business.
Tony Dunson has always had an artistic side, and finally, after a long career in management for various companies, he’s living his best life as a fully employed printer, creating all types of designs on a variety of apparel items.
While he started his own printing business about three years ago, it was one year ago this month that he opened his business, TD Printing, right here in Nevada, the community he’s called home for the past 33 years.
“I came here in 1993, when I was working at Burke,” said Tony, a native of the small town of Aplington, Iowa. Burke was one of several companies Tony worked for in management positions. He doesn’t have a degree in management, but instead said he worked his way up in that field by learning from others.
He was working for Keltek in Baxter, when he started dabbling in the printing industry.
“I was coaching youth basketball, and we always had sponsors. I’d take the money to get uniforms and then take them to be printed.” He got to know one of the guys doing the printing and learned more about the process. Maybe he’d finally found an outlet for his artistic side.
“In high school, I was involved in sports and played baseball, football, and track, and I also loved art,” he said. “I always wanted to be a teacher, an art teacher, but I never followed through on it.”
He first opened TD Printing in Elkhart. “I had a place where I could do the work, but no storefront,” he said. Things took off, and he became very busy.
A year ago, when another printing business closed in the old Smitty’s building in Nevada, he took a look at whether he could bring his business to that location. He ended up renting a business space in the building – not the one where the former printing business had been located – but another space that was vacant in the northeast corner of the building, facing I Avenue. It was a space that offered not only room for the specialized equipment he needed, but also for a storefront so he could sell apparel to walk-in customers. Much of that has been Nevada Cubs apparel for local residents.
He likes the storefront as a way of meeting people. “I get to talk to people and really get to know them,” he noted.
At work, the oldest of Tony’s three daughters is with him a few days a week. MacKenzie, a 2018 graduate of Nevada High School and a 2023 graduate of Iowa State University, has a full-time job with Friendship Ark in Ames and enjoys helping her dad at his business too.
Tony and his wife, Brenda, who works at the middle school in Nevada, have two other daughters: MaKayla, a 2021 graduate of Nevada High School, who recently graduated from ISU and now teaches in Madrid, and MaKenna, a junior at Nevada High School.
Tony and Brenda met through mutual friends while Tony was working at Burke. They looked at several of the area communities as possibilities for making their home, and they chose Nevada. Tony said that while it’s not as small a town as Aplington, Nevada still offers the small-town feel, and he loves the memories he created in a small town.
“You could go out and play all day and hear your mom yelling at you when it was supper time. I can tell you where every apple tree was, where a pear tree was, and I can tell you who had the oldest hose where the water tasted good,” he shared. Those were small-town times when life was a little different than it is today.
“People didn’t care that you were in their yards, as long as you were respectful. Kids don’t know that anymore. If my daughter was to go to a neighbor’s house and turn on the hose today, there’d probably be problems.”
A few more interesting things about Tony:
- He likes helping people and loves that his business can support worthwhile causes, like Hope for Harper
- He loves living in Iowa. “Iowa Nice is really true.”
- He doesn’t cook a lot, but when he does, he’s good with Asian dishes. “My grandmother was from Indonesia.”
- His favorite fall meal: The Thanksgiving meal – turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, and his grandma’s rice dish. “But maybe it’s not the meal, but more the fellowship.”
- His favorite pastime has been going to his daughters’ activities and coaching youth sports.
- He graduated from Aplington High School in 1989. The song that takes him right back to his high school days: “Hysteria” by Def Leppard. “You could wrap a movie around me when I hear that song.”
- Favorite movies watched in the 1980s: “Top Gun,” “Star Wars,” “16 Candles,” … “There were so many good movies.”
–Written by Marlys Barker, City of Nevada