Lee Ann Dumas

Austin, Texas, just lost a whole lot of cool points with the passing of LeeAnn Dumas on December 19, 2021. Born in Brownfield, Texas, on June 24, 1953, the youngest daughter of Anna Lee and Jerry Dumas (who once bought a café in exchange for a horse, or at least that’s how the story goes) did far too many amazing things in her youth to list. After attending Texas Tech University and developing a devotion to the Red Raiders that lasted the rest of her days, LeeAnn married and began a storied and oftentimes unthankful career as an elementary ESL teacher in multiple school districts in Texas, Georgia, and Arizona. Somehow, she found time to have two sons and remarried — to the love of her life, Ed Hopper.

LeeAnn used to say she knew Ed was the one for her because, on their first date, they assembled a barbecue without getting into an argument. Further to that, he took on the task of helping to guide her sons, Shannon and Nash, to careers in an emerging trend of the early 90s — technology — all while also caring for his extraordinary daughter, Meredith.

After settling in Phoenix, LeeAnn pursued her master’s and EdD from Arizona State University East, where she found a passion for using technology to solve the world’s problems through education and innovation. Shortly after Ed’s passing, LeeAnn made her way to Austin via a short stop at the University of Texas at Arlington. In Austin, she worked for the Texas Education Agency, and later joined the Texas Department of Agriculture, where she helped children get certified for school nutrition programs. It might sound like bureaucratic work, and it was, but LeeAnn was just as passionate about making sure kids got fed as she was about making sure they had a good education.

LeeAnn is preceded by her mother and father, her sister Jerry Catherine, and of course, her loving second husband, Ed. She leaves behind her brother Bob and his wife Jean, sons Shannon and Nash, step daughter Meredith, daughters-in-law Tracy and Shea, grandchildren Dexter, Finleigh, and Billie Wren, along with cousins Donna and Michael, an extended family so large it covers international boundaries, and a circle of friends so vast we could likely fill the entire obituary section if we were to name them all.

Shannon and Nash would like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to Ernest Grandy and Miles O’Neil for being with LeeAnn in her final days in hospital while the rest of her clan rallied from far and wide to be by her side.

LeeAnn was many things to many people. She was an excellent and compassionate teacher, a loving mother, and an even better grandmother. She was an accomplished pianist, band mom, hockey mom, theatre mom, master seamstress, and, in her later years, a sustaining member of KUTX, which she’d listen to daily while sometimes answering the call of Austin Pets Alive by fostering many, many senior dogs who were less likely to find a forever home (to be honest, she sometimes failed the "fostering" part and adopted them instead).

It’s never easy losing someone so young – especially when they were of LeeAnn’s caliber. She had plans to retire in the fall of 2022 and move out west to be closer to her grandchildren, to sew and emit her southern hospitality wherever she would go. We don’t know a soul who had a bad word to say about LeeAnn, and if they did, well, frankly, they’re wrong.

In accordance with her final wishes, there will be a celebration of life for LeeAnn, “whenever the weather is pleasant,” which is code for some time between October and November in Austin, or maybe on her birthday. Her final resting place will be with medical science, so she can use her mortal form to help students apply their classroom learning in a real-world setting.

In lieu of flowers, we ask you to donate funds to Move Texas (https://movetexas.org/), because LeeAnn believed in the power of the voter and knows no one should have their voice silenced. If fighting voter suppression isn’t your jam, please donate funds on her behalf to NARAL Pro-Choice Texas (https://prochoicetexas.org/) or, if you really don’t want to get political, KUTX (https://kutx.org/).

We love you, mom. We know you’re somewhere with Ed, planning that road trip y’all never got to take. We’ll leave a light on for you.