Louise Warren

In Remembrance of Louise “Dee” Warren: June 27th, 1943 - March 24th, 2021

Louise Warren was born June 27th,1943, the first of Louie Odom and Mamie Lee Toney’s three head-strong and soon-to-be patent leather and frilly dress spoiled daughters: the belles of a five-bedroom brick home in the heart of Detroit’s North End—107 Melbourne.

The L in Louise eventually would become synonymous with Love but not before her baby sister, Barbara Jean, nicknamed her Dee, partly because the L tripped her tongue but more because the actress Sandra Dee had become an obsession. Story goes that Bae thought her ebony smooth skinned sister Dee was as glamorous as Hollywood’s blonde Dee.

Dee embraced the name and shared it as if it had been given at birth. The name would be just one of the qualities that made Dee—the tallest of the Odom girls—stand out in the neighborhood and at Northern High School, where she became the first in the family to earn a high school diploma. Big glimmering eyes and an electric ever ready smile made her memorable too especially in the eyes of the late Anthony Warren, the man whom she chose to marry in 1968 at age twenty-five.

Though they had no children of their own, Dee and Uncle Tony made constant visits to 107, where they’d scoop up the first of three generations of nieces and nephews. Dee unofficially made herself mother to them all, starting with Nichole and Monique, the first-born children of her sisters, Barbara, who preceded Dee and their parents in death, and her surviving sister, Minnie.

As much as she loved the girls—often playing night-school teacher and carting them off to Belle Isle in the winter to ice skate—Dee’s heart grew a whole new chamber in 1978, with the birth of Minnie’s second child, Larry Earl Lewis Jr., the baby who would crack the family’s so-called girls-only curse and begin a new several decades trend of boys, boys, boys. Man, as Dee quickly crowned him, could do no wrong in Dee’s eyes, even when his little mannish butt was completely wrong. He was hers and their bond was tighter than a drum, with Larry and his wife Dianna, choosing Dee’s wedding date April 25th as their own in 2009.

This is how Dee loved: hard, constant and free of judgment. For nearly 12 years, that spirit accompanied her to work at Sinai Grace Hospital where she became popular delivering food to patients, usually with a few kind words too. When an accident with a drunk driver took away her ability to work, Dee returned home to Melbourne.

While her late parents were the family pillars and providers, Dee was the heartbeat, the lap each generation ran to for comfort, secret sauce French fries, refuge from worries and fuel for dreams. Depending on how the lottery was flowing, Dee loved to throw each kid a few dollars too. Sweet as she was, Dee could sling hard words too. Nothing was funnier than watching her give a sharp side-eye or verbally spar with her famously stubborn middle sister Minnie. Story goes that Dee tried a few times to teach Minnie to drive. They both loved to blame the other for

Minnie’s subsequent love of the bus and free rides. On any given day, these two had something to say about the other, usually ignited by Minnie’s joke-worthy cooking. Anyone within earshot learned to chalk it up to sweet salty sister love.

In the final year of Dee’s life, the sisters relocated to Southfield where they shared a bedroom together, so that Minnie could keep constant watch. When the ability to speak began to fail Dee, she’d wink or nod, and sometimes muster the strength to mouth what Minnie and all of her kids knew: I love you.

We pray Dee that you felt our love too. Wink at us when you can ;-).