 Gerta Bendl founded Apple Hill Playhouse as a young mother.The Bendls moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1962, before settling in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1967.Within two years in 1969, Gerta Bendl organized her fellow housewives as the Dames of Dundee to protest school boundary lines; though there was a "highly regarded public high school four blocks from her home," odd boundaries meant their children had to attend a school several miles away.