While on campus, it’s easy to recognize the many people who have helped shape Weber State University’s history. Their names appear on the side of buildings, over classrooms and even on entire departments. In honor of Women’s History Month, here are the stories behind some of the women recognized on campus.
Annie Taylor Dee
Annie Taylor Dee, after whom the nursing school at Weber State is named, played a very important part in establishing healthcare in Ogden.
Dee was born in England in 1852 and migrated to Utah in 1860, where she met and married Thomas D. Dee.
Lorrie Rands, archives processor for Special Collections and University Archives, wrote a piece about Dee for the “Beyond Suffrage” exhibit in 2020. Rand said that Dee’s husband encouraged her to work outside of the home and give back to the community.
“That trickled down into their kids. Each one of their daughters and then their youngest son were all philanthropists in their own way,” Rands said. “That’s what they taught their children.”
Her earlier projects include becoming a founding member of The Martha Society, a community of prominent women who did charity work around Ogden, and starting The Berthana which was a downtown social club called “the most beautiful ballroom in the West” at the time of its construction in 1915.
Dee started The Berthana with Bertha Eccles, hence the combination of their names for the building. It was located where Union Grill stands now on 24th Street. Rands said that both of their husbands encouraged this, which was rare since the idea of women working outside of the house was not popular at the time.
Dee dealt with a lot of loss in her life. According to Rand, she watched her oldest son die on their kitchen table due to appendicitis, and her husband died of pneumonia after falling into a river in South Fork Canyon and was not able to get to a hospital in time. Both of these situations encouraged Dee to open a hospital, the Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital on 24th Street and Harrison Boulevard in 1909.
In the starting years of the hospital, Dee was losing money. In Rands’s article, she wrote that Dee was paying expecting mothers $25 to have their babies delivered there. This amounts to over $800 in today’s standards, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
After a couple years of this, Dee turned to David O. McKay, after whom the education building is named, and together, they formed what is now the McKay-Dee Hospital. With McKay’s help, the hospital finally started to make a profit.
Another one of Dee’s notable accomplishments is that she started a school of nursing through the hospital that ran from 1910-1955, Rands said. The first class of eight nurses graduated in 1913. This was separate from Weber State’s school of nursing, which was also later named after Dee.
“The kids were always told by their dad to take care of their mom and to make sure she was well taken care of and treated with love and respect. And they did that, which is, in my mind, a little obvious because we have the Annie School of Nursing, not the Dee Family School of Nursing,” Rands said.
Dee died in 1934 and left a lasting impression on her children. Her oldest daughter, Annie Maude Dee Porter, wrote about her mother in her diaries every day on her birthday and the anniversary of her death.
Both Dee and Porter’s collections of diaries are kept in Special Collections and University Archives.
“You look at her diaries, and you can tell that she probably didn’t have a high education,” Rands said of Dee. “In comparison to Maude’s diary, which is very well written, you can tell education was important to her that her children become educated, and that trickled down.”
Elizabeth Dee Shaw Stewart
Elizabeth Dee Shaw Stewart, Annie Taylor Dee’s granddaughter, has many structures named after her on campus. The list includes Elizabeth Hall, Stewart Library, Weber State’s football stadium, Dee Events Center and even the bell tower.
Stewart had many connections to what was then known as Weber College, first as a student then as an employee and finally as an important benefactor.
“As an adult, Stewart championed projects and organizations that fostered education and cultural arts,” University Archives wrote in their 2020 online exhibit “Women of Weber.”
Stewart was the daughter of Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw, whom the gallery in the Kimball Visual Arts Building is named after. During Mary Elizabeth’s time at Weber State College, she participated in theater and was the associate editor of The Acorn yearbook.
The online exhibit said that Stewart returned to Weber working as an assistant registrar, a bookkeeper and then as a secretary to President Aaron W. Tracy. She found a love of teaching when she was asked to fill in and teach some English courses and a technology class. This love encouraged her to get a teaching license, and she worked as a fifth grade teacher at Washington Elementary.
Stewart was the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of humanities from Weber State College, the online exhibit said.
She died in 1996 at the age of 91.
These are only a few examples of important women in Weber State’s history. Many more women have played crucial roles in the university’s success. Students can find out more about them by visiting the library.
“The cool thing is that here in Special Collections and University Archives, we have so much information about them,” Rands said. “If anyone really wanted to learn more, it’s open and available for people to go and browse through these records.”
