Dee was born in 1930 to a family in the grips of the Great Depression. This endowed her with a thriftiness and economy of living that carried her to better times. A creative soul, Dee longed to go to art school and was offered a full scholarship at Duke, but it wasn't meant to be. Her father forbade her from attending Duke, and she soon found herself married with a young baby girl. Her creative spirit somehow survived all the demands of being a fifties' housewife, who was also a working Mom, long before this was accepted in polite society. She found time to put pen or paint to paper after a day of working, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and generally running her small family. She was extraordinarily competent in everything she tried, but she is most proud of her time as Executive Director of the American Heart Association of Lancaster County, where she set fundraising records. After retirement, she put her mind to traveling before moving to North Carolina to be closer to her family in her later years. Over all these years, she penned and drew her feelings, capturing the essence and emotions of several generations of women.