Dee Brock After years behind the scenes promoting civic and community involvement, education and even the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, Dee Brock is getting her turn in the spotlight. Brock is one of eight women being honored for Women in Tyler Day 2009.

"Of course I'm delighted, but humbled," said Brock. "I'm sure there are many others who deserve this honor more."

There probably aren't many others, however, who can boast of Brock's eclectic experience and ability to transition through an array of career choices, making her a perfect pick for today's event, which recognizes "Women Who Are Driven."

"I've had a lot of really interesting things that I've been able to do," she says, a significant understatement for a person who grew up in Wright City and has traveled the world both professionally and personally.

Brock's East Texas roots were established when she and her parents, Lester and Vera Mae Sala, moved from Oklahoma to Wright City, the result of her father's job with Sinclair Oil Company. Later, her widowed mother moved to Troup, and Dee lived there briefly on her return to East Texas about 10 years ago, before ultimately making her home in South Tyler.

Dee Brock enjoys a Cowboys' game from the stadium floor. Brock helped organize the original cheerleading squad. After that, she had a noteworthy career with PBS and now is involved in many local civic and community organizations. She also loves to travel and enjoys collecting art. While the road from Wright City to Troup and Tyler seems simple enough, there were several unexpected stops along the way.

After attending New London schools and the University of North Texas, Brock found herself married, starting a family and working as a high school teacher in Dallas; the leggy blonde also earned money as a sometime model.

"I would have a child, model a while and then go back to teaching," says the mother of three sons who now live in Nebraska, Austin and Dallas.

Brock's sideline job as a model eventually led to a totally different type of sideline experience: founder of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

"Someone recommended me to Tex Schramm," Brock recalls. "He was interested in having cheerleaders for the Cowboys and thought he would hire models."

After setting Schramm straight that the models would expect to be compensated ("He didn't have any idea that they would want to be paid"), Brock accepted the task of putting together a squad for the Cowboys. Eventually she told Schramm that it really wasn't a suitable job for models who would lack the necessary athletic ability and stamina.

With Schramm's okay, Brock decided to audition high school cheerleaders from the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Her reasoning was that they all attended the same camps and learned the same basic cheers, which could be adapted for the Cowboys.

The inaugural team was selected from 100 students who attended the first tryouts. The squad was initially girls only, with boys added later to allow for more acrobatic stunts. The coed squad, which only existed for a few years, was called the CowBelles and Beaux.

"They were so much fun to work with, and this was so much fun for my children, who got to go to the games," says Brock, adding that her students (yes, she kept her day job) "really thought that this was something."

Although her 15-year stint with the Cowboys was never a serious career choice for Brock, she made lasting contributions to the organization before leaving in 1975, including racially integrating the team and later transitioning the cheerleading squad to the more dance-oriented drill team that became a sensation.

Although Schramm offered her a full-time job with the organization, Brock says she didn't see herself as a career cheerleader and resigned to make room for someone who could devote their full attention to the job.

That decision freed Brock to put her full focus back on education, where she was now working with the Dallas County Community College District and teaching at El Centro. It wasn't long before Brock found herself involved in another ground-breaking venture.

She became an advocate of using television for educational purposes and was part of the group that developed the Instructional Television Center and pioneered creating college credit television courses.

"For the first course, we picked government because it's the only course every student in Texas had to take," she says. The response to the first course - 399 enrollees - blew them away and Brock remembers thinking "we should get serious."

An English composition class followed, with Brock picked to instruct the course as well as oversee the broadcasting production.

"At the time I complained 'I have to do everything,'" she says. "Looking back, I appreciate getting to do everything, learning how to do it all."

The success of the program led to Brock becoming the director of marketing and information for DCCD television courses. In this position she helped many colleges and universities create and expand their outreach programs. She says her boss wanted to share the expertise and the cost of producing television courses, an expense that ran to thousands of dollars even then.

That experience led Brock to the attention of the Public Broadcasting Ser vice which had the means of making educational courses available to every PBS station in the country. Brock accepted the job as director of the PBS Adult Learning Service (ALS) and moved to Washington, D.C., where she developed ALS and ALS Satellite Service; both were self-supporting services within PBS and together were a $7 million enterprise.

Recognition followed, including a National Endowment for the Arts award for Excellence in Television Programming and a National Person of the Year Award, but Brock found she was getting burned out on the non-stop focus on work.

"I loved my job, but it was all I was doing. I didn't have the kind of social life I thought I would have - everything I attended was mostly business."

Brock, now the senior vice president of education at PBS, decided to take a leave of absence and drive around the country for a year. Although she had visited most states and a few other countries for professional reasons, she felt she had never really seen America.

She was joined by her friend and roommate, Linda Resnik, who also had a highprofile Washington job and was tired of dealing with the red tape and bureaucracy.

What started as a oneyear sabbatical became a five-year adventure, with both women finding they had the means to support themselves through freelance consulting work. At the end of their nomadic experience, they decided on a more permanent stay in California where some of their biggest clients were located.

A call from friends of her mother eventually necessitated Brock's return to East Texas. It soon became clear that her mother was a victim of investment scams, so Brock returned home to be with her mother.

While in California, she and Resnik had begun work on a kitchen reference book and Brock persuaded her friend to come to Texas with her so they could finish the project. The unexpected collaboration, titled Food FAQs: Substitutions, Yield & Equivalents, became a success and was named by Cooking Light magazine as one of the 45 essentials for every kitchen.

The stay in Troup only lasted six months, when the house they were renting was sold, but Brock remains invested in the community through her position as president of the Friends of the Troup Library and the various fund-raisers the group is involved with.

"All my life I've been a book lover. Both my parents read a lot, and they never censored anything I read," says Brock. "I love libraries and have always been a supporter financially, but now am more active in helping."

Although her mother has passed away, Brock remains in Tyler and has become active in various civic and community groups. Retired from any paying work, she does publicity for both the Troup library and the Tyler Civic Theatre and is president in the League of Women Voters and president elect for the Friends of the Arts at UT Tyler, as well as being active in many other groups.

"From childhood, Dee was taught to do what she could to make life better in whatever circumstance she found herself," says Women in Tyler committee member Nancy Lamar. "'Driven' to work harder and to always be thankful, Dee has had a remarkable career as an educator, marketer, manager, consultant and writer."