Background
Dean was born Viola Blanche Evans in 1892 to John James and Catherine Evans, the youngest of their twelve children.
Dean was born Viola Blanche Evans in 1892 to John James and Catherine Evans, the youngest of their twelve children.
After deciding to become a teacher, Dean studied education at Jacksonville State University and later at Valparaiso University.
She remained there until 1957, spending a total of almost 30 years teaching in the public school system. Dean became a passionate naturalist and conservationist after teaching. One of her projects in the 1940s was the campaign to have the United States. government to declare Alabama"s Clear Creek Falls a national park, although the campaign failed and the falls were ultimately incorporated into Lewis Smith Lake.
In the 1950s–60s, she helped to found the Alabama Ornithological Society, the Alabama Environmental Council, and the Alabama Conservation Council (then known as the Alabama Conservancy).
She established an Outdoor Nature Camp in 1951, which she directed annually for thirteen years to educate teachers and other adults about Alabama"s natural history. Dean was inspired to write several books on Alabama"s zoology and botany by her frustration with the lack of books available on the subject.
She self-published Let"s Learn the Birds of Alabama in 1957, Trees and Shrubs in the Heart of Dixie in 1961, Let"s Learn the Ferns of Alabama in 1964, and Wildflowers of Alabama and Adjoining States in 1973. Dean died in 1974, aged 88, from complications caused by a major stroke.
The Alabama Wildflower Society later established the Blanche East. Dean Scholarship Fund and named its Birmingham chapter after Dean.
She was inducted into the Alabama Women"s Hall of Fame in 1985.
In 1967, after assisting the Alabama Environmental Council in designating Alabama"s first national forest, William B. Bankhead National Forest, she was awarded a prize from the National Audubon Society for conservation education. She was the first person from Alabama to receive such an award. In 1975, Dean won the Alabama Library Association"s first posthumous Annual Author Award for her non-fiction books
