She was born December 3, 1928, in Ayersville, North Carolinain the home of her great-grandmother, Mrs. Rosalie Martin Lewis Pratt, in a house built in 1819 which still stands on highway 770. Her mother was Ruby Lewis Grogan, only child of Gerthrie Frances Vaden and Samuel Alexander Lewis; her father was Conston E. Grogan, sixth child of Elizabeth Smith Grogan and E. J. Grogan.

She grew up during the "interesting" years of 1936-1945, with her parents and siblings, in the business her parents created and whose shell still stands on highway 220 beside the Dan River in Madison.

She attended WCUNC (now UNCG) for two years and transferred to University of North Carolina when her mother moved to Chapel Hill. After several years of teaching in Smithfield and Charlotte, she married Eddie (E.L.) Styers in 1954. They moved to Greensboro, to Pinecroft, where his family had settled in 1936. They lived for a short period in a log cabin on Azalea Drive. During the course of the next eight years, they moved two houses up on Azalea, then across Laurel Drive (now Pineview) to one of the Styers-built houses and then to 2412 Pineview, the Styers homeplace---by then with four children- - Steve, Dylan, Cindy, and Ellen--where they all lived happily.

The children moved away-but not far: Cindy at 2414 in a house built by Eddie's brother Thomas, and Steve at 2410 in house built by Eddie's father. Then Ellen bought the Baumbachs' house, only a short walk through the woods from the other houses, and Dylan built a house in a neighborhood a few miles away.

Eddie got into the golf course business and in 1979 formed his own manufacturing company, Four Seasons Golf . Dene taught in Jamestown High School (later became Ragsdale), Guilford High School (later became Western Guilford High School), and finally at Smith High School, to which she could walk — down a one-block street, across a wooden bridge, along a path through field and woods, then into the student parking lot of Smith. She taught there for 22 years. Teaching was her calling; she answered it reluctantly but came to embrace it and be embraced by it.

Cindy married Nader Heydary, and they had three sons, Nemat,

Mazi, and Dariush.

Dylan married Connie Harrison, and they had one son, Lee, and two daughters, Brittany and Jessie. Steve married, then divorced, and had one daughter Samantha Jane. Ellen married Doug Young.

Given the confluence and influence of place, heredity, calling, choices and luck/chance, she lived an "interesting" and highly rewarding life. She believed "to be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life." (Spinoza) She became what she was meant to be: herself, wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, and---always a learner and a lover of life.

In addition to husband, children, and grandchildren, she is survived by her siblings Alice Grogan Tenenbaum of Arlington, Virginia; C. E.(Buddy) Grogan Jr. of Mayodan. Their sister Jo Grogan Goodin died in February, 2013 and their youngest sibling, Jack Grogan, died in March, 2005.

If you want to do more, she suggests that you "each day, at least, hear a little song, read a good poem, look at a fine picture; and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words." (Goethe)

Except for a few necessary updates, this obituary was written by Dene in June 2005.