Sally Eileen Keith was born on February 15, 1954, in Chicago, Illinois, and lived for a time in New Jersey before moving with her family to Winston-Salem. After graduating from North she attended Lenoir-Rhyne and the University of South Carolina, where she earned a Master in Education degree in 1979, eventually becoming a teacher with the Charleston Hearing Impaired Program in Charleston, South Carolina. She died as a young mother on December 16, 1981, and was laid to rest at Live Oak Memorial Gardens in Charleston. She was 27 at the time of her death.