Emily Mildred Olson Dietrich
(1916-1996)

Died aged c. 80

Emily Mildred Olson Dietrich was born December 8, 1916 in West Palm Beach. After high school she attended Palm Beach Junior College, where she met her future husband, Edward Dietrich. In 1935 she transferred to the Florida State College for Women (now Florida State University), graduating in 1937. She taught school in California and South Florida, relocating to Deerfield Beach in 1954. There she organized a movement which led to the Deerfield Elementary School being listed in the National Register of Historic Places. She also served on the Deerfield Beach Library Advisory Board for 25 years and founded that city’s Friends of the Library. In the 1970s she helped organize the Deerfield Beach Historical Society, serving as its first president. In the 1980s she helped save Deerfield Island, served as a consultant on the restoration of the Deerfield Beach Atlantic Coastline Railway Station and was appointed the city’s official historian. Emily Mildred Olson Dietrich died in 1996.

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