Dee Hicks was born in Damascus, Arkansas in 1946. She was the tenth of 13 children born to Guy and Augusta Goff. Her father was a Baptist preacher and carpenter by trade, and her mother was a housewife. Hick’s decision to become a nurse became a focal point in her life in the tenth grade. She joined the Future Nurses’ Club and geared her high school classes toward nursing. Later, Hicks went to Oklahoma Baptist University and graduated with a bachelor of science in nursing.

Schwartz was born on May 13, 1926 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He attended Colorado Military School in Denver, Colorado and the University of Southern California. He left the university without a degree and went into the merchant tailoring business in Los Angeles, California. After that business went bankrupt, he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada with his brother, Seymour Schwartz, around 1951 and started Schwartz Brothers Clothing.

American photographer Glenn Augustus Davis was born March 22, 1894 in Portland, Oregon. He attended school in Oregon and Washington prior to working in the lumber camps and saw mills of Washington and British Columbia. He served in the US Army from 1915 to 1920. He was a member of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front in France during World War I. In the years following the war, Davis returned to the US and worked as a cook, a cotton grower, and a seaman before following his passion for photography.