Moses Dolo Jr.

Moses Dolo Jr. grew up in north Minneapolis, an area of the Twin Cities that is routinely scrutinized for its high crime rates and lackluster public education system, which helps explain why when Dolo was in middle school, his family elected to move to a suburb named Fridley.

“Fridley was safer. There were no gunshots at night,” Dolo says of Fridley.

Around the time of this move, Dolo not only became more aware of his surroundings, but he also began to develop an appreciation for his father, a man who worked tirelessly to support his family.

“My dad worked so hard to provide and take care of a wife and five kids. He showed me how to be a leader and what being a man is all about,” acknowledges Dolo, a gifted athlete who after high school left the Twin Cities to play college football in Wahpeton, a tiny city located along the Minnesota-North Dakota border.

After arriving on campus, Dolo didn’t evolve into a transcendent football player who would go on to achieve NFL stardom, but exiting the comforts of the Twin Cities did expedite his maturation process, and in turn teach him a few things about how other parts of the world operated.

“Being out in Wahpeton was different because I was on my own, and I learned a lot because even though North Dakota was a very quiet place, it gave me the chance to learn more about other people, and about myself,” he explains.

For context, Dolo notes that he was an atheist when he moved out of the Twin Cities, but soon after he became religious and made the commitment to devote his life to a higher power.

“I wanted to learn how to truly treat people the right way,” Dolo says of the decision to adopt religion.

Dolo’s life appeared to be trending upward, but before he accumulated enough credits to graduate, Dolo left football and North Dakota behind, citing a lack of belief in the direction higher education had taken him.

“I no longer saw much of a purpose in going to that school,” Dolo says, adding that the hefty price associated with going to school in Wahpeton compelled him to return to the Twin Cities.

“I didn’t want to keep taking out loans to go to school because I didn’t have the money to pay them back right away.”

After coming back to the Twin Cities, Dolo dabbled in the community college route for a brief period, but it didn’t take him long to realize that at that stage in his life, he wasn’t hungry for a formal education.

Rather, he wanted to work, and of course begin earning a sustainable income.

He eventually landed a job as a mail carrier for the postal service, a position that was far from cushy, and one that forced him to work harder than he ever had before.  

“I had never worked in an outside environment, and it was my first time with hands-on labor. The pay was better than other jobs I had worked in the past, but in the summer I was constantly dehydrated because I had never worked in the sun before,” Dolo says.

“It showed me how important it is to take care of yourself so that you can operate at peak efficiency when it’s hot and humid outside.”

And once the snow started falling, things didn’t get any better.

Dolo was working seven days per week, and if he wasn’t shuffling his hands together to prevent his fingers from getting frostbite, he was thinking about the possibility of better days ahead.

More specifically, warmer days, and living in a different region of the country.  

“I wanted to leave and go to Texas, but it wasn’t solely because of the weather,” Dolo mentions.

The Fridley native reveals that in addition to the frigid winters, the Twin Cities also didn’t offer an environment that could help foster his ambitions.

By then Dolo had amassed over $10,000 in savings, and after a three-day vacation in The Lone Star State, Dolo packed his suitcases and moved to Dallas, Texas.

In fact, he was so ready to move that he didn’t wait to secure a transfer with the postal service.

Which is to say, he didn’t have everything figured out, but he took massive action, and that alone propelled him into a different personal stratosphere.

“And I would tell anyone reading this article to be open to going to new places,” Dolo emphasizes, despite the fact that after migrating south, his life didn’t markedly improve.

That’s because Dolo wasn’t immediately able to get a job with the postal service in Dallas, relegating him to working for a community sanitation company until he could return to the USPS.

Worse, Dolo’s romantic life was in disarray.

Shortly after arriving in Dallas, Dolo thought he had found love, but after marrying a woman he was enamored with, the union became fractured, and divorce soon followed.

That experience stung Dolo to the core, but it also taught him a few key lessons.

“I’ll say this: if you really want to be married, you should thoroughly vet the person you’re considering for marriage,” Dolo says.

“You need to understand their moral codes and what they stand for. People often assume that they want the same things, but you can’t assume. You have to ask direct questions and also be honest with people.”

A religious man who is a staunch proponent of men and women abiding by conventional gender roles, as outlined in the bible, Dolo admits there were things he could have done differently in order to assess the long-term viability of marrying his ex.

“I am a traditional man. I’m not into the modern approach where things are 50-50 financially because I don’t believe it works on an emotional level,” Dolo says.

“In my marriage I was paying for everything, but where I went wrong is I was choosing a woman based off infatuation, and not because she had traditional values, which in fairness to her, she was never taught.”

At the same time, Dolo refuses to dwell on the misfortunes of his past, calling the preceding events simply part of his journey.

As for his professional aspirations, Dolo is working toward getting into the tech and cyber security sector of the postal service.

“There is a lot of demand for people with skills in technology,” he says.

Whether his entry into tech and cyber security happens this year, or in five years, Dolo has already proven to be action-based, and not in a reckless manner either.

That’s why he is not in a hurry for the next stage of his life to commence, because he knows that his faith will ultimately guide him to wherever he is supposed to be.

“I focus on the long term. I don’t make decisions based on the short term because I’ve learned that just because something is quick, it doesn’t mean it’s good,” Dolo says.

“God does not give us all the blessings we want for a reason. Just because I want something doesn’t mean that it is time for it to happen. I mean, I had to work for community sanitation to understand that it wasn’t my time to go back to the post office, but it wasn’t because there was something wrong with me. I just had to be patient and willing to grind through adversity.”

Wise words from a man who on multiple occasions could have retreated to the familiarity offered by the Twin Cities, but he didn’t, and now the future is so much brighter.

Says Dolo:

“I could have gone back to Minnesota after my divorce, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in Dallas and work hard so that I could get to where I want to be. I proved that I could do that, and so now I’m excited for the possibilities that exist in my life today.” QS

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