Birth date: Aug 16, 1938 Death date: Feb 4, 2025
Dixie Lee (Powell) Davis, age 86, returned to her Heavenly Father’s arms on Feb. 4, 2025, due to natural causes. She was born on Aug. 16, 1938, the daughter of Richard Eldo Powell and Klis (Worley) Powell Baretta. Dixie had one br Read Obituary
Dixie is such a beautiful soul. When I married her ex-son-in-law 20 years ago, she immediately treated me and my children as if we were her own, including us in family activities and even helping them with college tuition when the time came. I always felt completely loved and accepted by her. She has been a huge blessing in our lives and I am forever grateful to have met and known her.
Here are additional thoughts from mom's life story that were shared at the funeral:
Dixie was a miracle baby. Her mother, Klis Worley, had been told not to have any children due to physical disabilities. However, five years later Dixie Lee came into the world, delivered by her uncle, Dr Homer Fornoff, at Providence Catholic Hospital, in Oakland California, with the nuns praying over her and her mother.
She had a lovely childhood in San Bruno, California. She felt like it was one of the happiest times of her life. When she was five, her brother, Eugene, was born. However, within another five years her parents divorced, and she and her brother stayed close and tried to support each other and their mother as best as they knew how. Later Klis married Leo Baretta, an intelligent, multilingual, and talented man from Switzerland that Dixie came to love and call Papa. Through the years, Dixie’s talents blossomed. She played the piano, sang, and played the cello in the Capuchino High School orchestra.
Money was often tight while she was raising her young family, but Dixie was a determined woman. She found ways to save money in order to take her young family on vacations to California, where parents, grandparents, and many dear relatives lived. She loved showing her children where she grew up and took them to San Fransisco with its Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz Island, and other great sightseeing places. Everyone loved riding the trolley cars, trains, and BART. While visiting Briant’s family in Long Beach, CA, they visited various beaches, Disneyland, Universal Studios, Hollywood, and other exciting places. She truly enjoyed showing her children what life in the big city was like and the beauties of the California coast.
Her are some thoughts from mom's life story that were shared at the funeral:
After graduating from college, she wrote various newsletters and did marketing for printing companies as well as created her own public relations company. She oversaw all aspects of Dr. Val Farmer’s syndicated newspaper column, which specialized in rural farmer families’ mental health issues. She became the local Toastmaster’s Club president and the local and state Association for Children with Learning Disabilities president, as well as a board member for the Black Hills Advertising Federation.
In 2011, Dixie was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through extensive treatments with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. She was able to return to a normal life and continued to garden and tend her roses, play the piano, voraciously read, and eat chocolate. Her favorite books were historical novels and biographies, and she was well known for collecting and sharing newspaper clippings of obituaries of family and friends, but mostly of strangers that she fondly regarded.
Dixie was endlessly patient and concerned about my brother, Briant Jr, who was born with special needs. He lived with her, and she watched over and helped him for 51 years until he passed. It was a devastating blow to her when he was gone. He was her companion as they travelled around the country and to Hawaii. I thought it was amazing that her funeral ended up being on Briant Jr's birthday, February 10. He would have been 61.
These few memories probably don't do her justice, but I am so grateful that she was my mom. She wasn’t perfect, but she was the perfect mom for me.
Julia Davis Audretch
When I think of my mom, there are endless beautiful memories that come to mind. She was an avid gardener, an excellent seamstress, a fantastic homemade bread maker, a reader of scriptures and Agatha Christie novels, a lover of dogs and then later, her special cat, George. She would have 4 or 5 callings at one time, because she was talented, and the Rapid City LDS Church community back in the 1960’s was quite small.
She loved her portable dishwasher so much! It was the kind that rolled around on wheels and you hooked it up to the kitchen tap with a kind of clamp and hoses. She beamed like she had won the lottery when she brought that mechanical beast home!!
She was enthusiastic about music and joined the RCA Record Club when we were small. She subscribed to their monthly recommended suggestions. Because of this our musical life was rich. Roger Miller, Ferrante & Teicher, The Smothers Brothers, Thelonious Sphere Monk, Dvorak's New World Symphony, etc. This had a positive effect on our father, who finally decided to buy a stereo of excellent quality so we could listen to them.
If she wanted something, she would find a way to scrimp and save. She taught piano lessons at our home, and also organ lessons at the church. She wanted her own cello and bought one on a payment plan for $10 a month. It took her years, but she paid it off. She was creative in her approaches to solving problems. She came up with a way for the young women to sell snowcones at the local summer parades so we could earn money to go travel to youth conference.
We were a family that sang together in three or four part harmony. Jennifer and Dad played the violin, Mom the piano and cello, and Jennifer and I played the piano as well. We had many options when singing and playing together. This was something that Briant Jr could do in such a united way with all of us at home. This is one of the most powerful and fond memories I hold in my heart of my family, and of my mom.
She read us storybooks at night, she sang songs, and made sure we knelt by the bed and said our evening prayers.
Mom was an excellent seamstress. She sewed dresses for Jennifer and me, and sometimes for her to match as well. She sewed my senior picture dress, my senior prom dress, and my winter coat, which was a heavy, fully lined maxi length coat. She sewed me a full length pinafore dress with hand embroidered stitching on the pockets and front bib. When I got married, there was not much for a wedding budget. So she sewed my wedding dress, six bridesmaid dresses and my honeymoon negligee...and they were beautifully created.
Education was a very high priority to my mom. She supported our dad while he got his Masters and Phd, and then she saved her own schooling money and made plans while we were growing up. Eventually she went back to school after a few of us had flown the nest, and attended Black Hills State College and SDSM&T. She finished up her last year at BYU while dad was there on sabbatical. She got her degree in Communications with an emphasis in Public Relations in 1980, at age 42. Later on life, she created a trust for her children and grandchildren, in which she could help them financially with college tuition or vocational expenses.
I was attending BYU when mom was there for her senior year. She was so young and vivacious that when I would introduce her to my friends and aquaintances, everyone thought she was my older sister. At the time, it disturbed me a bit, ha ha ha!! She was twenty years older than me, but what a great example!! We attended a class together in the original Joseph Smith Building, where Stephen Covey taught a class. We really enjoyed that time together. Dixie loves icecream, and we spent many happy times at the BYU Dairy, packing on the joy. :)
