Agnes “Dee” Dawson DeBra

DeBra—Agnes “Dee” Dawson DeBra, 84, on February 7, 2025, peacefully, in hospice care at Benton House of Decatur in Decatur, Ga. Two Friends were present, and her children had just visited. Dee (or Deedie, as she was called in childhood) was born on June 20, 1941, to Edward B. and Susan L. Dawson in Washington, D.C. Dee grew up in D.C., graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School. She received a bachelor’s degree in French from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1963, and married Don William DeBra Jr., that June.

Dee began her career teaching junior high school French in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, while Don was in medical school at Case Western Reserve. Their son, Ted, was born in 1967 in Chapel Hill, and daughter, Elizabeth, in 1969 in San Francisco, Calif., while Don was serving in Vietnam. They moved to Don’s hometown of Atlanta, Ga., in 1973.

Dee attended Friends Meeting of Washington (D.C.) at the historic Florida Avenue Meetinghouse during high school, and Wellesley (Mass.) Meeting during college. She participated in Quaker work projects in Boston. Dee joined Rochester (N.Y.) Meeting when she and Don lived there and transferred her membership to Atlanta (Ga.) Meeting in 1974. Dee attended meetings for worship regularly with Ted and Elizabeth when they were young. She said that Atlanta Meeting was always the mainspring of spirituality for her life.

Dee volunteered at the Georgia Council for International Visitors, then taught 12 years at Yeshiva High School, and volunteered for seven years with Fulton Atlanta Community Action Authority as a tutor for adults earning their GED diplomas. Dee said that the experience of teaching at Yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish high school, working with rabbis and students, made spirituality part of her everyday life.

Dee retired from teaching to become Don’s caregiver. Close companions, she and Don celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in June 2013, months before he died. She worked with Friends to hold a celebration of his life under the care of their meeting.

Dee was multi-talented, with a gift for languages that was nurtured by her step-grandfather, William Dawson, who was a diplomat. Her interests included gardening; playing guitar and ukulele; playing in the Atlanta Balalaika Society; reading French and Russian; quilting, knitting, and embroidering; playing tennis; researching her family ancestry; and doting on her two grandchildren. She served in the nursery at Atlanta Meeting.

Dee loved the coast of Maine, springs in Druid Hills in Georgia, and spending time with in-laws Susan and Bill Smart at Lake Burton in Georgia. Dee will long be remembered for her thoughtfulness and compassion, down-to-earth humor and sense of fun, intellect and love of teaching, inexhaustible curiosity about history, love of spy novels, devotion to her family, and passion for education and justice.

Dee was predeceased by her husband, Don DeBra Jr.

She is survived by two children, Ted DeBra (Leah Melvoin) and Elizabeth DeBra; two grandchildren; her sister, Puckie Gries; and eight nieces and nephews.