Person

Sheila Dederick

Sheila Dederick (neé Solomon) was born on September 21 1922 at Mouille Point, Cape Town. She attended St Cyprian’s High School in Oranjezicht, Cape Town. After matriculating, she attended the Grahamstown Teachers Training College. During the Second World War she worked as a nurse at what became the Robin Gordon Hotel at St James, where she met Robert Dederick, out on war duty from England. After the war, she went to Austria to work for UNRA, helping refugees to find homes. In England she married Robert on September 7 1949, and thereafter worked as a teacher at the Dragon School. After the birth of her first childe, Elizabeth, she was slightly crippled and they decided to return to South Africa, where they settled in Cape Town, and had three more children, Charlotte, Robert and Jane. Sheila Dederick wrote numerous short stories which were published in The Argus, Cape Times, Southern Cross and The Tablet. In 1967 Tickey, a full-length novel for young adults, was published by Oxford University Press. It was later serialized for radio in 1968 and its sequel Julie for Short, although not published, was also serialized for radio, in 1969, under the direction of Kathleen Davydd. Diane Wilson played Tickey in both serials. In the early 1980s Tickey was prescribed as a setwork for Standard Five English Second Language pupils and was brought out in paperback. Sheila also adapted a number of short stories for radio, e.g., Kathleen Mansfield’s Bliss. She also had a play accepted for a South African anthology, published by Maskew Miller. In the late 1970s she had poems published in the Cape Times and in an overseas booklet, Lark Rising. She died at Sea Point on 10 October 1980.