Pamela Ann Dean

After living in Gloucester, North Carolina for over 25 years in the 100 year old gorgeous house she loved, Pam moved to to New Bern, North Carolina in 2022. She was born in Amarillo, Texas and a proud Texan.

Starting at a very early age, she was a lab technician in the medical field for many years before retiring early and traveling the world. She and her husband, Michael, had been married 45 years and started their marriage traveling with his job and living abroad in the Netherlands, England and Japan. She loved traveling, seeing many places all over the world and they shared many adventures and great times. She became an excellent packer and mover over the years but was content and very happy settling in her beautiful house in Gloucester and was only forced to leave it due to health issues. She and Michael had lived in many older homes and shared a passion for renovating and upgrading these homes, doing all the work themselves. After he retired and they settled in North Carolina, they had a shared love for being on the water, especially sailing and had a beautiful sailboat that they spent time on.

Pam loved animals and especially her dogs. She had many different dogs over her life, pug, English bulldog, Dobermans, labradors, dachshund, but fell in love with Westies in England and has had them ever since. She leaves behind two of them, Maggie and Thatcher, but never stops talking about her first one Maxie. She was also known to never turn away a stray cat that came to the porch, taking some of them in the house eventually. One of her regrets was never getting to Africa to go on safari to see all the animals.

Needlework and stained glass were passions that Pam enjoyed spending lots of time doing, sometimes into all hours of the night. All of the walls of her houses are always adorned with beautiful pieces of her work and will be loved and appreciated for all time by family and friends. She also loved gardening and growing all types of plants indoors and out and spent time studying to be a master gardener. She really had a green thumb and enjoyed digging in the dirt and growing vegetables. She had a love for African violets and orchids and had quite a collection at one time.

Growing up in a family that owned grocery stores, Pam always had a love for strolling and shopping in grocery stores everywhere she went or lived. It provided quite the adventures in Japan and other foreign countries - often getting something she didn't expect. She not only liked to buy the food but was an excellent cook and loved to prepare all sorts of meals including holidays. Pam loved to eat and would never turn down her favorites – hamburgers or tacos. She loved Mexican food, which she lamented wasn’t up to par in North Carolina, and through her life would always recount her most vivid memory -the first time she smelled and ate a taco as a kid.

Pam's only daughter was the light of her life and they shared everything between them and enjoyed many wonderful adventures and memories on mother/daughter trips like snowmobiling in Utah, Disneyworld in Florida, visiting horses in Kentucky, Christmas at Biltmore Estate, her daughter's 50th birthday in Washington, D.C. They were extremely close sharing a deep love and an unbreakable bond as best friends and were blessed to spend the past 25 years living near one another sharing their lives.

Pam loved to laugh and was always up for doing something fun in her earlier years and many people share happy memories and stories of different hijinks and adventures. Her sister, Darla, and her could stay up and laugh, telling stories of all the things they did, reliving fun times and memories. Although they didn’t always have much, they found ways to have fun and enjoy life whether it was playing in old cars as kids or finding a way to afford to go see Tony Bennett as young adults. Their regret was not living closer to one another in later years so they could spend more time together.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Elmer Lee and Ann Greathouse.

She is survived by her husband, Michael Dean, only daughter, Delonda Alexander, sister, Darla Wisdom, stepchildren, Heather Dean, Bruce Dean and Stephanie (Lara) Cowan, niece Shelly Wright, nephew Jeffrey Wisdom and many other great nieces and nephews.

She was blessed to be healthy most of her life until the last 3 years when kidney failure caused her to go on dialysis and other health issues followed. Many people including family, friends and doctors say that she was one of the most resilient, strong women they had ever met. She would face adversity head on and soldier through many things that most people could not and was fighting until the end when her body could not hold up any longer. Through everything, she always had a big heart, a smile, was kind, empathetic, loyal and a good person. She has definitely passed on her strength and spirit to her daughter in many ways and will never be forgotten by those whose path she has crossed.