Dee Mann, outdoors writer and promoter

Delores (Dee) Mann, of St. Louis Park, an outdoors writer and early tourism promoter in Minnesota, died Sept. 7 at a St. Louis Park nursing home. She was 92.

She and her husband, Stu, wrote and published Minnesota Outdoors Guide Books in the 1960s and '70s and wrote syndicated outdoors columns.

She also was a welder in Navy shipyards in World War II, said her son, Marshall Bruce Mann, of Coventry, R.I.

She worked as a welder in the early 1940s in California shipyards during the big push to build more ships for troops fighting abroad, he said.

After the war, she raised her two children and, starting in 1958, helped her husband compile and publish "Minnesota Outdoors" -- annual guides with fishing tips, anecdotes and information on resorts and restaurants, said her daughter, Marcia Robbins, of Orinda, Calif.

Her parents created "Operation October," a fishing and hunting outing, held for many years at large resorts that attracted sportsmen, state officials, media and sporting industry representatives, Robbins said.

Mann greeted guests, helped organize meals and lodging and went fishing with her husband and sportsmen.

Mann, who grew up in Minneapolis, was commended in the late 1960s by Gov. Harold LeVander for her outdoors promotion. Her certificate said: "In recognition of your unselfish devotion and contribution to travel in the interest of outdoor sports, with particular emphasis on fishing, and for your faithful and untiring work as publisher of the Minnesota Outdoors Yearbook."

Neither Mann nor her husband, who died in 1981, could drive. They took cabs or hired someone to drive their car, their son said. He said it was his job in the summer to drive his folks to resorts around the state to see which places merited inclusion in their annual outdoors guide.

Mann, a creative, articulate woman, was hard of hearing because of a childhood eardrum injury. But she loved music. "She had a baby grand piano for a long time that was the love of her life," her son said. "She could play very well and composed songs like 'Don't Trouble Trouble.'"