Deese later became the Chairman of the Psychology Department at University of Virginia until his partial retirement, later remaining as professor emeritus.
Deese, a 1/2 Lumbee Indian was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on December 14, 1921.
Deese retained a love for Southern California—its geography, its culture and history his entire life.
Deese had a passionate love for classical music and enjoyed playing the piano from the time he was a child, well into his older age.
Later, Deese moved more into the area of Psycho-Linguistics and worked with other early pioneers in that field such as Noam Chomsky.
Deese became mentor to many doctoral students who went on further to develop the field of learning, cognition, and language, such as Alfonso Caramazza, Leonard M. Horowitz, William P. Banks, Allyssa McCabe, and Herbert H. Clark.
A popular book from 1965 was called The Structure of Associations in Language and Thought (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965).