Dean Faulkner Wells was the niece of the great writer William Faulkner and our last living link to him. She died on July 27th at the age of 75 following a stroke. Dean was named for her father, William’s brother, who died in a barnstorming plane crash four months before his first baby was born. William stepped in as father figure, becoming her legal guardian, helping to raise and support Dean, paying for her education, even walking her down the aisle when she got married. (When the ceremony was over, Faulkner took the flowers from the altar and placed them on his brother’s grave.) Dean grew up calling her uncle “pappy” and spent a great deal of time at the Faulkner family home in Oxford, Mississippi. Dean wrote a book about her experiences called Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi.
You can read a few of her obituaries here, here and here.