My mom, Dale Volberg Reed, was a true jack of all trades. As my sister, Elisabeth, said when she died, “Mom was a musician with me, a visual artist with my sister and her mother, a writer with my Dad…and she did all those things as well as any of us”. That’s all true. And, she had her own talents to boot, cooking and hosting among them.

Mom and my dad, John Shelton Reed, wrote about the South and Southern cuisine. Their works include Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue and 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About The South. However, mom’s interests didn’t just stop at the Mason Dixon line. The world was truly her oyster. We lived in the Middle East and England in the 1970s (hello, Indian carryout as your fast food!). Mom and Dad traveled extensively, with fellowships in Italy and India. Our kitchen at 126 Mallette had a large armoire stuffed with tattered, stained cookbooks from around the globe.

Mom used food to communicate and nurture. I would come home from school on a rainy day to find hot sourdough bread and honey butter waiting for me. When a friend would sleepover, we would wake up to fresh scones, homemade jam, and the most delicious concoction of all …. an Orange Julius! We always had a good breakfast. We always had hot food in our lunch box. We always had a vegetable with dinner. Now that I’m a mother, I realize the enormity of that effort.

I once told someone that mom was interesting because she was interested. And, I think you’ll agree with me when you see what I have to share!

Dale Volberg Reed
August 25, 1941 - October 19, 2018
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Dale Volberg Reed, 77, died peacefully, surrounded by her family, on Friday, October 19, at her home in Chapel Hill. She faced death with calm acceptance.

The daughter of Frank Marshall Volberg and Phyllis Roberts Volberg of Kingsport, Tennessee, she went to Duke University as an Angier B. Duke Scholar and studied piano with Lauren Withers. She subsequently received a master's degree from Harvard University and was graduated from the Westchester Conservatory of Music.

She married John Shelton Reed, also of Kingsport, in 1964. The Reeds moved to Chapel Hill in 1969 and lived there ever since, except for occasional years and semesters away in Jerusalem, London, Palo Alto, and elsewhere. They have two daughters, Elisabeth Marshall Reed, a musician in Oakland, California, and Sarah Greene Reed, an artist in Austin, Texas.

Dale Reed was a talented musician who taught piano privately for many years. She also played the guitar, mountain dulcimer, and harpsichord (she built her own), and she sang alto for 48 years in the choir of the Chapel of the Cross. With her husband, she wrote 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South and Holy Smoke, an award-winning book about North Carolina barbecue. She fearlessly attacked and mastered exotic recipes, watercolor painting, quilting, and handicrafts of all kinds.

In retirement she trained herself as a genealogist and photographer, and enjoyed cross-country blue-highway road trips to see her granddaughters. She also liked crossing the North Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 and church-crawling in English villages.

She is survived by her husband and daughters, and also by sons-in-law Andrew Luchansky and Christopher Bean; granddaughters Leah Reed Luchansky and Lucinda (Luca) Bennett Bean; her brother Frank Marshall Volberg of Purcellville, Virginia; and her uncle Joseph Linton Roberts, of Lincolnton, Georgia.