Della Daisy Yoe served for more than two decades as the receptionist and caretaker for the Audigier Art Gallery in Hoskins Library. She grew up on Clinch Avenue, and her father, attorney J. W. Yoe, was the first mayor of West Knoxville when that area was incorporated in 1888. Her first job was with the Knoxville Journal as a suburban (West Knoxville) reporter, where one of her first assignments was to interview actor Charles Coburn, who was operating the Coburn Players. Yoe joined the road show, playing several bit parts, and then became the traveling agent for the group. Yoe claimed the distinction of having been the first female reporter for the Charlotte Observer, a job she quit to return to New York, where she became head correspondent for a Swiss company that sold yard goods.
Following the stock market crash, she had a variety of temporary jobs, and then returned to Knoxville and became the receptionist at the Audigier Gallery. She was a participant in the WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project from 1936 to 1938, serving as foreman of the First District Project that interviewed former slaves. In 1941 she prepared material on Cudjo’s Cave for the Federal Writers Project. Her story “’Til The River Rises,” a narrative about Knoxville’s shantytown section, was published in the Federal Writers Project volume These Are Our Lives.