Dale Volberg Reed

1941 - 2018

Dale Volberg Reed

August 25, 1941 - October 19, 2018

Chapel Hill

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.

There will be a Funeral Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 10, followed by burial in the churchyard.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to support the music program at the Chapel of the Cross. (To donate online, go to thechapelofthecross.org, click "Sustaining Our Church," then "Make a One-Time Gift," then select "Memorials Fund," and note that the gift is in memory of Dale Reed.}