(4) A Natural Teacher

In a 1960 article in the Alabama Journal, a Montgomery Newspaper, writer Katherine Tyson described Miss Dee as “a natural teacher.” Her assessment is borne out by a letter that Merton Robertson had written to Miss Dee two years earlier, in 1958

“Dear Miss Mary, 

64 years ago this month a little 6 year old boy sat on a wooden bench over by the west wall of the upper room at the Haden place. And his teacher was a 13 year old girl. He thought then that she was a wonderful girl.

Now an old man three score and ten, he thinks you are a wonderful girl still.

Lots of Love

Merton”

Merton was a member of the Robertson family from Shorter.  He was a first cousin to Dr. Malcolm Lightfoot, who I mentioned in the Introduction, and whose wife was a first cousin to Miss Dee.  As evidenced by the letter, he was a little younger than Miss Dee. He had moved to Tallassee. A faithful member of the Tallassee Methodist Church, the “Old Men’s” Sunday School Class at First United Methodist Church still bears his name. 

When Miss Dee turned to writing in the 1930’s, it was to write Bible studies for women’s groups, with careful directions as to how to use the material: always the teacher! 

During her long and useful teaching career, Miss Dee logged in 40 years of teaching, according to a note that I found in the box. The hand-written note lists 14 years in teaching Alabama that included 9 at Shorter. It lists 4 years in Georgia, that apparently do  not include 6 at Paine College, because they  are listed separately. It indicates that she spent at total of eleven years at Oklahoma University, and other evidence makes it clear that those years were not consecutive. She spent four years in Lubbock Texas, teaching at Texas Tech. The passage of time, and death of the people who knew her well makes it difficult to recreate an exact chronicle of her teaching career, but I will try to reconstruct that time table as we continue to study her career in depth.  If you have any information or suggestions about where I might locate further information, please share it with me.