Remembering Dee Brock, Who Built the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, 1930-2026

Dee Brock, the founding director of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, died Sept. 23 in Tyler, Texas, at 96. Her family and the DCC shared the news that day, and the Wall Street Journal ran its obituary of her this week, a good reason for Cowboys Nation to stop and remember the woman who built one of the most famous parts of our game days.

From the classroom to the sideline

Brock (1930-2026) was born Dorothy Faye Sala in Covington, Oklahoma, and grew up in East Texas. She was teaching high school history in Dallas, and modeling on the side, when Tex Schramm came to her as the young franchise got going. Instead of hiring models, she started with high school kids doing traditional cheers, a co-ed squad she ran for a few hundred dollars a year.

Then she kept pushing it forward. In 1965, while much of Dallas was still segregated, she lobbied Schramm to bring Black cheerleaders onto the squad, something her family and the people who interviewed her say was one of the hardest fights she took on. When Schramm wouldn't pay to send the cheerleaders to Super Bowl V, she went on local TV and found a sponsor herself. After the move to Texas Stadium in 1972 she remade the group into an older, all-women dance squad, brought in choreographer Texie Waterman, and sketched the first version of the uniform that still looks almost the same today. She retired after the 1975 season, and the DCC honored her with a lifetime achievement award in 2022.

The cheerleaders were only one chapter. She earned a doctorate in English from North Texas, was on the founding faculty of El Centro College in 1966, worked in adult education with PBS, and later founded the East Texas Book Fest in Tyler.

Our Take: Every time the DCC take the field at AT&T Stadium, they are running on the blueprint Dee Brock drew up. She integrated the squad before most of the city was ready, she paid her own way to the Super Bowl stage, and she turned a sideline idea into a worldwide brand. Netflix's America's Sweethearts director Greg Whiteley said it best: if the Cowboys ever put a woman in the Ring of Honor, it's hard to find anyone more deserving.

Our thoughts are with her sons, her grandson Craig, the entire Brock family and every DCC alum she paved the way for.

via WSJ

Photo: Texas Inspiration via Wikipedia, fair use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cropped_Photo_of_Dee_Brock.jpg).

Sources: CBS News Texas, NBC News, Tyler Morning Telegraph, Wikipedia